T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
6
activities. The programme was expanded in 1998 with
the foundation of the World Commission on the Ethics of
Scientiﬁc Knowledge and Technology (COMEST), which
addresses other areas of applied ethics such as environmental
ethics, science ethics and technology ethics. Since 2002,
UNESCO has also been coordinating the activities of
international bodies in the area of bioethics through the Inter-
Agency Committee on Bioethics. In the same year, UNESCO’s
191 Member States decided that ethics should be one of the
priorities of the Organization.
The current revolution in science and technology has led to
the concern that unbridled scientiﬁc progress is not always
ethically acceptable. The need to establish common values and
benchmarks, as well as to promote ethical principles and standards
to guide scientiﬁc progress and technological development, is
becoming increasingly acute, especially in developing countries
that do not equally enjoy the beneﬁts of scientiﬁc and technological
advances. UNESCO’s work in ethics of science and technology
reﬂects these global concerns. It examines such progress in light of
ethical considerations rooted in the cultural, legal, philosophical and
religious heritage of the various human communities.
UNESCO’s activities in ethics of science and technology take many
forms and cover much ground. They include, for example, drawing up
recommendations for decision-makers and developing ethical guidelines,
standards and legal instruments, such as the Universal Declaration on
the Human Genome and Human Rights (1997) and the International
Declaration on Human Genetic Data (2003). UNESCO also helps to
develop regional networks, builds capacity, promotes ethics in science
education and provides educational materials. Furthermore, it performs an
essential ‘ethical watch’ function and plays an important role as a catalyst
and think tank, informing public opinion on the human rights implications
of scientiﬁc and technological progress.
H
e
n
k

t
e
n

H
a
v
e
7
UNESCO and
Ethics of
Science and
Technology
Linking science and policy: COMEST
In 1998, UNESCO established the World Commission on the Ethics of
Scientiﬁc Knowledge and Technology (COMEST) to advise the Organization
on issues concerning ethics of scientiﬁc knowledge and technology. This
18-member body is composed of prominent and independent scientists
from various disciplines and other experts from different regions of the
world. They are appointed by the Director-General of UNESCO for a four-
year term. The COMEST Secretariat is located within the Division of Ethics
of Science and Technology.
COMEST is speciﬁcally mandated to be an international advisory
body and an intellectual forum for exchanging ideas and experience;
encouraging the scientiﬁc community to examine fundamental ethical
questions and to detect the early signs of risk situations. It formulates
ethical principles that can shed light on the various choices and
impacts brought about by new discoveries. It advises decision-makers
on policy issues and promotes dialogue between the international
scientiﬁc community, government and the public at large concerning
sensitive areas such as sustainable development; freshwater use and
management; energy production, distribution and use; outer space
exploration and technology; as well as issues of rights, regulations
and equity related to the rapid growth of the information society.
The Commission executes its mandate by bringing together
experts to study speciﬁc problems and disseminates the results
of their analysis through publications. Areas such as ethics and
space technology, ethics and energy, and ethical issues in relation
to water use have been examined in the past, and have led to
widely disseminated publications (Audouze, 1997; Kimmins,
2001; Pompidou, 2000; Selborne, 2000). The most recent
publication concerns the Precautionary Principle; because this
principle is controversial from an international perspective,
a group of experts was formed to analyze the concept and
its applications in diverse settings in order to clarify possible
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
8
misunderstandings (COMEST, 2005b). COMEST also organizes
a public session every two years, bringing together scientists,
ethicists, lawyers and policy-makers to discuss salient ethical
questions in science and technology. Such well-attended
conferences are organized in different regions of the world,
not only to provide a platform for global concerns but also to
stimulate the ethical debate and the creation of networks of
experts in these regions. Recent conferences have taken place
in Rio de Janeiro (2003) and Bangkok (2005) (COMEST, 2005a).
The forthcoming meeting will be in Africa in 2007.
Ethics education
The Framework for Action of the World Conference on Science
(Budapest, 1999) states that ethics and the responsibility of science
should be an integral part of the education and training of all
scientists and that they should be encouraged to respect and adhere
to basic ethical principles and responsibilities of science. In 2002, the
Division of Ethics of Science and Technology and COMEST organized
a Working Group on the Teaching of Ethics that has provided advice
on how to integrate ethics and responsibility in scientiﬁc training. This
Working Group has produced a report on the teaching of ethics, which
includes a survey of existing programs, an analysis of their structure and
contents, and detailed curriculum advice on how to integrate ethics,
history, philosophy and the cultural impact of science into scientiﬁc
education (COMEST, 2003). This report has been the basis for the Ethics
Education Programme launched in 2004.
During the 32
nd
UNESCO General Conference (2003), many Member
States expressed the need to initiate and support teaching programmes in
ethics, not only in bioethics but in all scientiﬁc and professional education.
Teaching in this area varies greatly between regions and countries, and
requires that attention be given to moral issues that are relevant to speciﬁc
regions. As a ﬁrst step, it is important to collect data on ethics teaching. In
H
e
n
k

t
e
n

H
a
v
e
9
UNESCO and
Ethics of
Science and
Technology
order to establish a database of ethics teaching programmes, standardized
forms have been developed to describe teaching programmes so that the
substance of each programme can be examined and various programmes
analyzed and compared. Within a group of countries, experts are identiﬁed
who are actually teaching within a university setting. The experts are invited
to take part in a regional meeting; in advance, they are invited to provide
data on their programmes and to return the forms so that these can be
discussed during the meeting. Often, it is the ﬁrst time that experts have
insight into the programmes taught by their colleagues. The meeting
provides an opportunity for data to be clariﬁed and discussed, difﬁculties
identiﬁed and problems discussed with colleagues. With the empirical
data obtained and clariﬁed, the next step is taken: exploring future
needs and how UNESCO can help to promote ethics teaching. To date,
expert meetings have been organized in Budapest (October 2004),
Moscow (January 2005) and Split (November 2005). Approximately
100 teaching programmes have been approved and will be entered
into the Global Ethics Observatory (GEO) database. In 2006, further
meetings are planned in Asia and the Arab region. One common
ﬁnding so far is the vulnerability of ethics teaching programmes.
Often, the programmes are taught by enthusiastic teachers but
lack a ﬁrm institutional basis and do not create a future generation
of ethics teachers. Another ﬁnding is the absence of cooperation
between nations. International cooperation between experienced
teachers in neighbouring countries could create programmes
with more impact and sustainability, but awareness of other
programmes and willingness to work together in this area need
further stimulation.
Another feature of the Ethics Education Programme is the
Advisory Expert Committee on the Teaching of Ethics. This ad
hoc Committee, composed of members of IBC and COMEST
as well as a representative of the UNESCO Chairs in Bioethics,
the Third World Academy of Sciences (TWAS) and the World
Medical Association (WMA), will assist UNESCO in the area of
ethics teaching. One of its ﬁrst projects will be the development
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
10
of a proposal for a core curriculum in bioethics, on the basis
of the recently adopted Universal Declaration on Bioethics and
Human Rights. As soon as such a proposal has been developed,
multimedia resources will be created in order to assist scholars
who want to establish teaching programmes in bioethics. In
future, similar efforts can be made for other areas of applied ethics,
such as environmental ethics and science ethics and engineering
ethics (examples of which can be found in the GEO database).
Research
As the leading international agency in ethics in science and technology,
UNESCO explores new and emerging issues in this ﬁeld, such as
nanotechnology and, in bioethics, human cloning, stem cell research
and pre-implantation diagnosis. Ethical reﬂection is often criticized
for being too late and, therefore, futile. It is important to establish
anticipatory mechanisms for identifying and analyzing scientiﬁc and
technological advances that will give rise to ethical questions in the near
future. Sophisticated and innovative technologies are usually developed
in a limited number of countries, but the impact and consequences of
these technologies are sooner or later felt by all countries. In such cases,
it is appropriate that all Member States of UNESCO be made aware at
an early stage of the possible ethical issues in regard to new scientiﬁc
knowledge and technology. A good example is nanotechnology. A group
of experts has been brought together by UNESCO to study this issue; they
are researching the state-of-the-art in science and ethics. The experts’
papers will be published in a book aimed at making policy-makers aware
of the ethical implications. They will also assist the Secretariat to draw up a
policy paper with suggestions for possible actions by UNESCO. This policy
paper will then be submitted to COMEST for advice and analysis. Another
example is ethics in relation to space technologies. UNESCO, together with
the European Space Agency (ESA), is organizing public conferences focused
on ethical issues of space sojourns (October 2005) and space exploration
(October 2006) (UNESCO, 2005a).
H
e
n
k

t
e
n

H
a
v
e
11
UNESCO and
Ethics of
Science and
Technology
Raising awareness
UNESCO strives to create a better understanding of the major ethical issues
raised by science and technology and supports analysis and discussion of
those issues internationally, regionally and nationally. An essential part of
this work is raising public awareness and stimulating public debate. This
is important for two reasons. First, ethics is of interest to policy-makers
because of public concern. Because there is public concern and debate on
issues such as cloning, research involving human beings, transplantation,
nuclear energy, environmental pollution and global warming, ethics has
been placed on the national and international agendas. Ethics is no longer
solely the concern of scientists, engineers or health care professionals.
It has therefore transcended the exclusive domain of experts, showing
that science is ﬁrst of all a public enterprise, a social activity and a
cultural good. Second, scientiﬁc developments often affect all people.
This is clear in medical research, which is increasingly dependent on
the cooperation of large numbers of patients and healthy volunteers,
often in international trials. This implies that the interests of science
and research should be balanced with the interests of participating
people, precisely because human rights and freedoms can be at
stake. Public debate and awareness raising are therefore important
to make it clear that science and technology are advancing within
an ethical framework of respect for human dignity and human
rights. They also show that scientists have responsibilities towards
society and do take into account the possible effects of their work
on society, for example as regards protection of the environment,
promotion of justice, and prevention of biohazards and bio-
events.
That is why the Division of Ethics of Science and Technology
organizes ‘Ethics around the World’, a series of thematic rotating
conferences to disseminate information and promote interaction
and networking among national and international experts. The
objective is to stimulate debate at national and regional levels
to build up the participation of civil society in the debate.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
12
These conferences, which are organized jointly with national
commissions for UNESCO, UNESCO ﬁeld ofﬁces, and academic
or research centres, usually feature one or two keynote speakers
(often members of IBC or COMEST), followed by open debate.
Over the last two years, ‘Ethics around the World’ conferences
have been held in the Netherlands, the Islamic Republic of Iran,
Lithuania, Mexico, Argentina, the Russian Federation, Portugal,
Turkey, the Republic of Korea, Indonesia, China, Estonia and the
Philippines. During 2006, ‘Ethics around the World’ conferences
will take place in New Zealand, the Democratic Republic of Congo
and the Dominican Republic.
Awareness raising will also be carried out by producing and
disseminating publications. An explanatory brochure has been
made on ethics and human cloning; this publication has been
produced in the six ofﬁcial languages of UNESCO (English, French,
Spanish, Arabic, Russian and Chinese) (UNESCO, 2005d). A similar
brochure focusing on ethics and nanotechnology is in production.
Global Ethics Observatory
In order to provide Member States with proper tools for reﬂection
and appropriate means for coping with emerging ethical challenges
in science and technology, UNESCO is becoming more involved
at national and regional levels. The establishment of a Global Ethics
Observatory (GEO) will be such a tool. GEO is constituted by at least
four databases. The ﬁrst database (‘Who’s who in ethics?’) will present
data on experts in various areas of ethics. A questionnaire has been
developed and mailed to experts in all regions of the world. The database
will allow searches for different types of experts according to country, area
of expertise, experience and keywords. The second database will include
data of institutions such as ethics committees (at different levels: local,
national, regional, international), departments and centres in the area
of ethics, and associations and societies in ethics. This database, like the
H
e
n
k

t
e
n

H
a
v
e
13
UNESCO and
Ethics of
Science and
Technology
others, will cover all areas of applied ethics: bioethics, nursing ethics, law
and ethics, social sciences and ethics, science ethics, environmental ethics,
engineering ethics, etc. In due course it will also present all data in the six
ofﬁcial languages of the Organization. The third database will present the
descriptions of ethics teaching programmes developed through the Ethics
Education Programme, described above.
Efforts are now focused on constructing the layout of the fourth
database. This database aims at providing information about legislation,
guidelines and policies developed in Member States in relation to
the ethics of science and technology. It will not merely provide the
texts of such legal regulations, but, more importantly, will identify
the structure, set-up and contents, which will be instructive for
other countries that are contemplating drafting legislation in the
domain of ethics, for example in connection with research involving
human beings or with ethical principles in science in general. In
order to provide useful information that can guide the drafting of
legislation, the database will provide examples; it will therefore be
necessary to abstract or excerpt the main characteristics of existing
legislation. A team of legal experts will examine the question of
how international legislation can be made comparable and will
develop a methodology for the construction of this database.
Additional databases may be included in GEO in the near future,
for example a database with existing codes of conduct for
scientists.
Building national capacity and international
cooperation
The objective of the UNESCO programme is to identify ethical
issues that are relevant to the various regions of the world in
an effort to determine and implement appropriate strategies
for encouraging ethical reﬂection at regional and sub-
regional levels, and for strengthening national capacities and
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
14
international cooperation in bioethics. For these efforts to be
successful, it is essential to take into account the legal, cultural
and religious traditions in the Member States.
This is why the Universal Declaration on Bioethics and
Human Rights advocates the establishment of independent,
multidisciplinary and pluralist ethics committees at national,
regional, local or institutional levels. The purpose of these
committees is to foster the exchange of ideas and information,
support decision-making, develop tools for standard setting,
and strengthen coordination and contacts among experts and
institutions (e.g. through databases). They also reinforce the
role of UNESCO as an international clearing house for ethical
issues. Ethics committees will also be among the most important
intermediary bodies for the implementation of the normative
instruments adopted by the Member States. In many countries,
there are bioethics committees at various levels of government.
However, in the majority of Member States, such committees do
not exist at the moment. UNESCO has a programme to support
the establishment and operations of bioethics committees – the
ABC (Assisting Bioethics Committees) programme. Through a series
of practical guidebooks, information is provided about how to
establish such committees, and how to function when a committee
has been established (UNESCO, 2005b, 2005c). New guidebooks
will address the topics of educating committee members and public
outreach of committees. Task forces of experienced committee
members in Member States with operational committees will assist
those countries that are in the process of establishing committees. In
future, similar efforts will be focused on national committees with a
mandate comparable to COMEST, covering areas of ethics of science and
technology beyond bioethics. In some countries, for instance Hungary,
such national ‘COMEST-type’ committees have been established, and
their experiences can be useful for other Member States.
H
e
n
k

t
e
n

H
a
v
e
15
UNESCO and
Ethics of
Science and
Technology
The Avicenna Prize for Ethics in Science
Created in 2002 by UNESCO on the initiative of the Islamic Republic of Iran,
this biennial prize rewards individuals and groups who have contributed
to high-quality research in the ﬁeld of ethics in science and technology.
It is named after Abu Ali al-Husain ibn Abdallah ibn Sina – also known
by his Latin name Avicenna – one of the greatest scientists, philosophers
and doctors of the 10
th
and 11
th
centuries (UNESCO, 2004). The Prize
consists of a gold medal of Avicenna, a sum of US$10,000, and a one-
week visit to Iran, during which the prizewinner will deliver speeches at
academic gatherings. Candidates are nominated by UNESCO Member
States and international NGOs ofﬁcially linked to the Organization, and
the Director-General designates the winner on the recommendation
of an international jury. The ﬁrst Avicenna Prize was awarded in April
2004 to Margaret A. Somerville, an Australian-Canadian Professor of
Law and Medicine at McGill University in Montreal. She is also the
founding Director of the McGill Centre for Medicine, Ethics and Law,
and the founding chairperson of the National Research Council for
the Canada Ethics Committee. The second Avicenna Prize laureate
(2005) is Abdallah S. Daar. Previously Professor of Surgery at
Sultan Qaboos University in the Sultanate of Oman, he is currently
Professor of Public Health Sciences and of Surgery at the University
of Toronto, Canada, where he is also Director of the Programme in
Applied Ethics and Biotechnology and Co-Director of the Canadian
Program on Genomics and Global Health at the University of
Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics, and Director of Ethics and
Policy at the McLaughlin Centre for Molecular Medicine.
This collection
In this publication we have brought together a selection of
writings by the two Avicenna Prize laureates. The following
chapters not only give an impression of the breadth of their
scholarship but they also provide excellent examples of
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
16
the type of research that the Prize intends to promote and
disseminate. Professor Somerville analyzes the fundamental
problems of contemporary ethics in present-day societies as
well as the philosophical questions raised by the modern life
sciences. Professor Daar focuses on illuminating speciﬁc topics
of modern science and technology such as pharmacogenetics,
xenotransplantation and regenerative medicine, with special
attention to their global impact and implications. We hope that
publishing their work in this book will promote ethical reﬂection
in the Member States of UNESCO and will give further impetus to
ethics of science and technology around the world.
References
Audouze, J. 1997. The Ethics of Energy. Paris, UNESCO.
COMEST. 2003. The Teaching of Ethics. Paris, UNESCO.
_________.2005a. Fourth Session, 23-25 March 2005, Bangkok, Thailand:
Proceedings. Paris, UNESCO.
_________.2005b. The Precautionary Principle. Paris, UNESCO.
Huxley, J. 1946. UNESCO: Its purpose and its philosophy. Paris, Preparatory
Commission of the United Nations Educational, Scientiﬁc and Cultural
Organization, p. 41.
Kimmins, J. P. 2001. The Ethics of Energy: A framework for action. Paris, UNESCO.
Pompidou, A. 2000. The Ethics of Space Policy. Paris, UNESCO.
Selborne, J. 2000. The Ethics of Freshwater Use: A survey. Paris, UNESCO.
UNESCO. 2004. Avicenna and the Ethics of Science and Technology Today. Paris,
UNESCO.
_________.2005a. ECSL/UNESCO/IDEST Symposium on a ‘Legal and Ethical Framework
for Astronauts in Space Sojourns’: Proceedings. Paris, UNESCO.
_________.2005b. Guide 1: Establishing Bioethics Committees. Paris, UNESCO.
_________.2005c. Guide 2: Bioethics Committees at Work: Procedures and policies. Paris,
UNESCO.
_________.2005d. Human Cloning. Ethical issues. Paris, UNESCO.
C h a p t e r 2
Margaret A. Somerville
Searching for Ethics
in a Secular Society
Recently, the search for ethics seems to have been everywhere.
One has only to pick up the daily newspapers to see the perceived
relevance of ‘ethics talk’ to much of what goes on in our lives as
individuals and communities. We are now exploring the ethics of
politics and politicians; the ethics of public policy, governmental
bureaucracy and public accountability; ethics in academia,
business, industry and health care; the ethics of our treatment
of animals; environmental ethics; ethics in the media; ethics in
sport; the ethics of armed conﬂict; and the ethics of scientiﬁc and
medical research and the new technologies resulting from it. This
widespread search for ethics can be seen as an early twenty-ﬁrst
century revolution in conscience and consciousness, in the sense
of awareness of the need to ask the question ‘Is it right?’ in a
wide variety of contexts. Science and technology is only one of
these contexts, but, as many of us have come to realize, it is an
especially important one.
* Adapted from Chapter 1 of The Ethical Canary: Science, society and
the human spirit. Somerville, M. A. 2000. Toronto, Canada, Viking.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
18
Why has this search for ethics emerged now? In our
postmodern, industrialized Western democracies? They are
societies characterized by being pluralistic, secular in the
public square and politically, and multicultural. These same
features also mean that these societies lack a ‘shared story’ – the
collection of fundamental values, principles, attitudes, beliefs,
myths and commitments that we need to buy into in order to
function as a society, and that we use to give meaning to our
communal and individual lives. This story, or societal-cultural
paradigm, is the glue that holds us together.
However, at present, in secular societies we are in search of a
new story. Some of the factors that have caused the collapse of
our old story result from the extraordinary advances in science and
technology, whether information technology, the neurosciences,
nanotechnology, artiﬁcial intelligence or molecular biology and
genetics. The possibilities these advances open up are mind-altering,
society-altering and world-altering and, depending on how we use
them, could radically alter our human nature or even annihilate us. We
have become very sensitive to the threats that these new technologies
present to our physical existence and our planet. Our contemporary
search for ethics shows, I believe, that we are becoming much more
sensitive than we have been to their threats to our human spirit – the
deeply intuitive sense of relatedness or connectedness to all life, especially
other people, to the world, the universe and the cosmos in which we
live; the intangible, invisible, immeasurable reality that we need to ﬁnd
meaning in life and make life worth living. In short, the human spirit is
the metaphysical reality (that which is beyond the physical) that we need
to fully live fully human lives.
Our shared story has always focused on the two major life events of each
human life, birth and death. Indeed, the general level of respect for human
life that permeates a given society is largely determined in these contexts.
We also structure both our rational and non-rational knowing in a coherent
framework through focusing on human beginnings and endings. Many
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
19
rituals of celebration and mourning have human beginnings and endings as
pivotal motifs. We use these rituals to create the sense of community that
we need to enrich our experience or to sustain us, both at the time of these
events and more generally.
Contemporary ethics talk often focuses on the possibilities that new
scientiﬁc developments have opened up in relation to birth and death.
At one end of the life span, we are faced with a stunning power that no
humans in previous ages ever possessed: the potential to alter, through
the use of a combination of genetic and new reproductive technologies,
the very basis of human life and its mode of transmission. As discussed
in greater detail in the next chapter, the possibilities presented by these
technologies include in vitro fertilization; cloning human embryos;
cloning our adult selves; using ova from aborted fetuses to produce
children whose ‘mother’ was never born; and designing our progeny
through genetic manipulation in ways that range from choosing
certain physical characteristics – such as height or eye or hair colour
– to dramatically augmenting their intelligence through a so-called
smart gene and even creating disease-proofed children. At the other
end of the life span, we face issues of the allocation of very expensive
life-prolonging treatments; xenotransplantation; withdrawal of life-
support treatments from terminally ill people; and euthanasia.
In the past, we wove the metaphysical fabric in which we
wrapped the events of birth and death mainly using the resources
that we found in religion. And we bonded together through a
shared religion – both in the present and with past and future
generations. After all, the word religion comes from re-ligare
– to bind together. The great religions have traditionally given
us a compelling shared story, allowed us to pass on our most
important values to future generations, enabled us to form and
live in families and communities, and stimulated and extended
our human imagination. But in the mid-1970s we began to
transfer our ‘collective faith’ from religion to the extraordinary
new science that was emerging. In particular, modern
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
20
medical ‘miracles’ held out hope, if not of immortality as most
religions do, at least of delayed mortality. This new science
radically altered our perceptions of the nature of human life,
its transmission and its passing. Consequently it forced us to
re-evaluate the meaning we give to the major life events of
birth and death, and, therefore, the nature of the society we
will create. Moreover, in postmodern, secular, pluralist societies
such as Canada, by deﬁnition, religion – or at least traditional,
institutional religion – can no longer be used to create our shared
story, at least not as a sole mechanism. Quite apart from the fact
that today many people do not adhere to an institutionalized
religion, even those who do are likely to practise one that is
different from that of their neighbours. And yet for many people,
religion remains an important lens through which to see life and the
values and meaning that we attribute to and ﬁnd in it. The secular-
societal paradigm we create must, therefore, as we see articulated
in all declarations of fundamental human rights, accommodate and
respect people’s freedom of conscience and religion.
One of the substitute forums for religion that has emerged in secular
societies in the last ﬁfty years is medicine and health care. Because we all
personally relate to and identify with health care, it is a very important
forum for creating values, implementing those values and carrying
them forward. Health care is also the forum in which new scientiﬁc
developments and the ethical issues they raise are encountered by people
most directly and personally – and often most dramatically. Within this
primary forum of health care, we will work out the ethics that should
govern these new technologies and decide what we may, must and must
not do with them. Thus health care is an ethics laboratory for societies like
Canada. Our decisions about health care, especially when those decisions
concern new scientiﬁc and technological developments, are never just about
health care. They have a much wider impact on society as a whole.
For example, extraordinary new advances in medical science have shocked
us into recognizing that we do not have consensus about the values that we
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
21
need in order to address the immense ethical issues these new technologies
raise. We have also recognized that these issues must be accommodated
within our general societal paradigm; we would deal with them in isolation
at our peril. The search for ethics is part of this accommodation process.
Our search for ethics is also related to a change in the basis of trust in our
societies. Jay Katz, a psychiatrist and law professor at Yale University, has
described this as a shift from ‘blind trust’ (‘Trust me, because I know what
is best for you’) to ‘earned trust’ (‘Trust me because I will show that I can
be trusted’). Just as we can no longer assume that there is consensus
on the values we will uphold, likewise, we can no longer assume the
presence of trust in our society and its institutions. Rather we must take
steps to ensure that it is present.
One way to view the search for ethics, then, is as the search for societal
values in a secular democracy. In this type of society, we no longer
automatically have access to a received set of values through a shared
religion, and we can no longer impose values or assume there is
consensus on them. We must, rather, ﬁnd and agree on these values
and a very important context in which we are seeking to do this is in
relation to how we should and should not use the new science.
I want to identify some particular changes that have resulted from
the overall shift in the general societal context I have just described,
changes that are powerful forces in precipitating the search for
ethics. These include a move to intense individualism; the adoption
of a situational ethics approach in searching for shared values; the
impact of the media; the increased use of law in resolving disputes
about values; the effects of the unprecedented powers provided
by new science and technology; the emergence of new fears;
the impact of a ‘gene machine’ mind-set on our societal-cultural
paradigm; an intolerance of mystery; a loss of our sense of the
sacred, and of wonder, awe, play and humour; the emergence
of a market-place approach to values and, subsequently, post-
materialism. Let us examine some of these in more detail.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
22
Secular Western societies are based on intense individualism
– possibly individualism to the exclusion of any real sense of
community. In fact, one way to view intense individualism is as
the institutionalization of a sense of disconnection from each
other. And yet we humans cannot live fully human lives without
having a sense of belonging to a community – whether the
smallest community of family, the larger one of our immediate
friends, peers, neighbours, village or city, or the even larger
one of society, as a whole. Many of us have difﬁculty eliciting
this sense that we are part of something larger than ourselves.
Indeed, Daniel Yankelovich, a leading survey researcher in the
United States whose work focuses on changes in the values of the
American population, found that the fastest growing trend was
people’s longing to belong to something larger than themselves, a
yearning for some form of transcendence.
Did the adoption of intense individualism mean that we lost a sense
of community or did we reject a sense of community and adopt
intense individualism to ﬁll the void? If the latter is correct, why would
we reject community? Might we have confused community with ‘the
system’ that we use to run our society – especially the bureaucracy
that makes up this system – and rightly rejected the notion that a
system would ever be considered more important than individuals or
take priority over them? But there is a difference between a system that
runs a community – including when that community is a society – and a
community, itself. The latter is a living entity; it has, for want of a better
word, a soul. The former does not. Sometimes a community might take
precedence over individuals; a system should not.
John Ralston Saul in his book The Unconscious Civilization describes
a phenomenon he calls ‘corporatism’. He points out that although the
foundation of democracy is that each person’s voice should be heard and
each person’s vote should count, modern democracy functions in response
to interest groups – corporate entities ranging from grassroots groups to
transnational industries – who advocate approaches that favour them but
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
23
not necessarily the society as a whole or the common good. The individual
is powerless – his or her voice is not heard and a vote does not count. Is
there a relationship between this development and intense individualism?
Could intense individualism have given rise to corporatism – individuals
coalesce as individuals in order to exercise power to their own advantage?
Is corporatism an example of collective intense individualism?
We can see the impact of intense individualism in relation to science and
medicine in some of the approaches taken, for example, to the new
reproductive technologies and euthanasia. If we give pre-eminence to
the values of personal autonomy and self-determination, and competent
adults’ rights to decide for themselves, the result is highly likely to be
a judgement that most applications of reproductive technology and
euthanasia are acceptable. But respecting the rights of the individuals
who make up a society, important as this is, is not always sufﬁcient to
protect the society itself. Sometimes, in carefully justiﬁed instances, to
do so we must give priority to the needs of the community over the
claims of individuals.
Intense individualism can also be connected with a loss of respect
for ourselves, others and our environment. Re-spect comes from the
Latin word meaning to look back on. If we cannot see ourselves in
context, if we lose our ties with the past – if we fail to look back
– progress becomes synonymous with amnesia. The philosopher
Mark Kingwell calls this the great ﬁction of the ‘eternal now’. We fail
to remember at our ethical peril. Respect is the mechanism through
which we remember, and it requires us to see ourselves in a larger
context than just ourselves. Intense individualism functions from
the opposite basis and is, therefore, incompatible with this type
of respect. (One area where exploration of the conﬂict between
respect and intense individualism could provide insights is that
of the allocation of and access to health-care resources.)
Intense individualism is probably, in part, a response to
globalization. Because the vastness of the connection that
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
24
globalization represents can make us feel so small, insigniﬁcant
and anonymous, we seek refuge for our ego – reassurance
that we exist and, perhaps, matter – in intense individualism,
tribalism or both. The danger of tribalism, which in some ways
is also a collective form of intense individualism, can be seen in
many of the horriﬁc armed conﬂicts and massacres in various
parts of the world in the last decade. Such examples make us
realize that intense individualism can be an attempt to fulﬁl a
need to take control in a situation in which we feel abandoned
and afraid because we have an overwhelming sense that indeed
we are only an individual – we are alone.
There is, however, a paradoxical side to intense individualism.
People who espouse it (strong civil libertarians, for instance) can
bond through their belief – it can function as an ideology binding
them together, as a substitute for the bonding that religion used
to provide. Moreover, the experience of going through a stage of
intense individualism might be the template for a new – or a return
to a very old – form of community. This change would occur if we
moved beyond the focus of intense individualism just on individual
rights to an equal and balancing focus on individual responsibilities,
especially for those people who are vulnerable, for community and for
the common good. A concern raised by the predominance of intense
individualism is that it has caused us to lose a sense of the common
good and of what is required of us if we are to protect and promote
the common good. The current search for ethics could indicate the
emergence of a focus on individual responsibilities as well as rights and
a renewed willingness to act in the interests of furthering the common
good.
In contrast, if we apply intense individualism to our search for values, they
can be reduced to simply what I as an individual prefer, which means that
it is very difﬁcult to ﬁnd consensus and, as a result, to form community and
protect the common good. The political scientist Francis Fukuyama, in his
controversial book The Great Disruption: Human Nature and the Reconstitution
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
25
of Social Order (with at least some of whose arguments and beliefs we might
take issue), sums up this phenomenon as ‘moral individualism’ resulting
in ‘miniaturization of the community’. But for the purposes of the line
of argument I want to develop, the most important effect of the loss of
consensus on values is the adoption of a situational ethics approach. In
taking a situational ethics approach to the formation of values – adopting
moral relativism – so that we can keep all our values’ options open, we
seem to have lost the ability to agree that anything is inherently wrong
– that is, wrong no matter how much good could come from doing it.
But can we in practice implement a view that something – for instance,
human cloning – is inherently wrong in a society that has no absolute
moral rules or no external source of authority for those moral rules that
it does have? Can we believe in a moral absolute, even if we are not
religious and even if we do not believe in a supernatural being as the
ultimate authority? I propose we can do this by accepting two values,
which are probably two sides of the same coin, as absolutes. First, we
must always act to ensure profound respect for all life, in particular,
human life; second, we must protect and promote the human spirit,
which I deﬁned earlier in this chapter. If our development or use of
any given scientiﬁc technology, for example, would seriously harm
the fulﬁlment of either of these two values, it is inherently wrong. I
return to this theme in the following chapter.
Another change from the past is that we are media societies. This,
in turn, has changed the nature of the public discourse through
which we create the shared concepts, ranging from values to
laws, that govern our collective life. We are the ﬁrst age in which
our collective storytelling takes place through television – and
now, increasingly, the Internet – and, consequently, at a physical
distance from each other. We do not know how, in the long run,
this change will affect the stories we tell each other in order
to create our societal-cultural paradigm. Creating our ‘shared
story’ through the media may, moreover, alter the balance
between the various components that go to make it up. For
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
26
example, with our current fear-attraction-obsession reaction
to death, we may engage in too much ‘death talk’ and too
little ‘life talk’, or too much despair and horror and too little
hope and joy. Moreover, the unprecedented, almost daily
exposure of virtually everyone in the society to violence, cruelty
and death – seeing the horrors of war, for example, each night
in our living rooms – may overwhelm and dull our sensitivity to
these atrocities and to the awesomeness of death and, similarly,
of inﬂicting death, whether in war or by euthanasia. The adverse
effects of this phenomenon are often discussed, but we need to
be especially aware of its impact in the context of doing ethics.
Our frequent failure to take into account social issues in doing
ethics is also connected with the increasing use of the media as
the means through which we engage in our societal dialogues. The
media encourage us to focus on the individuals whom we can see
and listen to. For instance, it is difﬁcult to present the argument on
television that in governing the new reproductive technologies we
must put future children at the centre of the infertility business and
consider what is best for them, rather than simply what the person
seeking to use this technology wants, or what investors in fertility
clinics promote as ‘good for business’. It is much easier to show a happy
mother and a beautiful child who resulted from using this technology,
thus making the case for such use, than to show its risks and harms,
especially to important human values such as those governing parent-
child relationships.
We face the same dilemma in arguing against euthanasia. It makes dramatic,
emotionally gripping television to feature an articulate, courageous, forty-
two-year-old divorced woman who is dying of amyotrophic lateral sclerosis,
begging to be allowed to have euthanasia made available, and threatening
to commit suicide while she is still able if she is refused such access. It is
much more difﬁcult to show the harm to important societal values, such
as respect for life, and to the institution of medicine, such as loss of trust in
doctors, that legalizing euthanasia would cause.
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
27
In short, the arguments against reproductive technology or euthanasia
that are based on the harm they would do to society are especially difﬁcult
to present in the media. They do not make dramatic and compelling
television. Visual images are difﬁcult to ﬁnd; we do not personally identify
with either the arguments or the people presenting them in the same
way we do with those of happy parents playing with children produced
through reproductive technology or dying people who seek euthanasia;
and society cannot be interviewed on television and become a familiar,
empathy-evoking ﬁgure to the viewing public.
In order to identify and articulate the values that we need and can
share, we must engage in ‘values talk’. Our places of religious worship
used to be our main forums for engaging in these discussions. But
values talk has been transferred to the media as ‘ethics talk’. This
ethics talk is frequently interwoven with ‘law talk’ concerning the
same issues.
The role of the legal process (and, probably, of law) in forming our
societal values has also changed. Matters such as reproductive rights
or rights to refuse medical treatment that would have been largely
the subject of moral or religious discourse are now explored in our
courts and legislatures, in particular through concepts of individual
human rights, civil rights and constitutional rights. When this
happens, the cathedrals of a secular society – its highest courts
and parliaments – become the forums in which the talk that forms
societal values takes place. Consequently, it is not surprising that
many of the issues surrounding new scientiﬁc developments that
evoke widespread public discussion, hope and concern are also,
in one form or another, ending up in the courts. For instance,
in some countries, people are currently arguing in court about
the patenting of human DNA and other life forms, including
genetically altered animals; others are seeking injunctions
against the release of genetically engineered micro-organisms
into the environment; and products-liability law is being used
to require the labelling of genetically altered food.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
28
We have become legalistic societies, and this change is
connected with a loss of consensus on values, probably
intense individualism and the impact of media. Law provides
a bottom line, working consensus on values, even if in
substance we still disagree. Law is also the most powerful
way for individuals to challenge the state and has a very
prominent role in establishing the values and symbolism of
a secular society. People who are seeking to change these
values and symbols use debates such as those on reproductive
technologies, abortion and euthanasia as opportunities to
further their goals. They do this through taking test cases to
the courts and by advocating for changes in legislation. The
response of those who oppose these changes can often be to
propose harsh measures – for instance, framing them in criminal
law – to reject the new values and afﬁrm the old. (For example,
legislation speciﬁcally criminalizing the transmission of HIV in some
American states indicates a backlash by those with conservative
values against society’s acceptance of homosexuality and tolerance
of drug use. But these people might also see enacting such laws as
a way to afﬁrm values that are threatened by this acceptance and
tolerance.)
It might also be that taking test cases to the courts is some people’s
way of forming community, somewhat paradoxically, out of intense
individualism. Being committed to individual rights – especially those
that confront traditional conservative values, such as women’s rights to
equal pay for work of equal value or the right to marry for same-sex
couples – can form the basis for a collective identity, usually one based
on “minority status.” This identity and the shared values that underlie it
can be afﬁrmed through successful litigation. These cases might also be
showing a further shift in the locus of our decision-making about societal
values. The locus of such decision-making has moved from religion and the
clergy to the legislatures and politicians and now to the courts and judges.
It is interesting to speculate whether there could be another shift and, if so,
where this would be.
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
29
Yet another reason why the search for ethics has emerged now is that the
new science has moved us from chance to choice in many matters – for
instance, reproduction. With choice comes the responsibility to use that
choice ethically. Doing so requires two kinds of courage: the courage to
go forward with the new science and technology when it is morally and
ethically acceptable to do so, and the courage to exercise restraint when it
is morally and ethically required.
Fear also plays an important and complex role in our responses, both as
individuals and as a society, to new scientiﬁc developments. Sometimes
the fear we experience is unjustiﬁed. But sometimes a moral anxiety or
an ethical intuition is at the base of our fear and should be heeded. Often
we deal with fear by seeking to take control over the situation that elicits
it. Consequently, we are likely to adopt new scientiﬁc developments
that we see as giving us control and to reject those that we see as the
source of our fear. We need to carefully research how fear affects our
individual and societal psyches and, as a result, our assessment of
what is ethical in relation to new scientiﬁc developments.
The fact that we are very intolerant of mystery can also cause ethical
difﬁculties. Sometimes, we eliminate mysteries by converting them
into problems. For example, if we convert the mystery of death
into the problem of death and seek a technological answer to
that problem, a lethal injection, that is, euthanasia, can be seen
as a solution. An inability to live comfortably with uncertainty –
which is a variation on discomfort with mystery – can also cause
us to adopt simplistic, reductionist approaches to very complex
realities. Genetic reductionism – the view that we are nothing
more than the expression of our genes – is a good example in
this regard. Often these approaches lead us astray ethically.
Similarly, many of us have lost access to a sense of the sacred,
including the notion that we, as human beings, are sacred in
any meaning of this term. There are multiple causes of this loss
over the last half-century, including our extraordinary scientiﬁc
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
30
advances. By a sense of the sacred, I mean the recognition
and protection of the human spirit – a sense of what I call the
secular sacred. This might be more a new label or awareness
than a new reality. For instance, we are using this concept often
without recognizing that we are doing so to come to a new
realization about what is required for respectful human-Earth
relationships.
New genetic discoveries and technologies have, along with new
reproductive technologies, had a major impact on our sense of
the sacred. They can lead us to believe that we understand the
origin and nature of human life and that, because we can, we may
manipulate – or even ‘create’ – such life. If we transfer these same
sentiments to the other end of life, they would support a view that
euthanasia is acceptable, that is, if we can create life we may dispose
of it. In other words, we can regard the current movement for the
legalization of euthanasia as a correlative development with the new
genetics, and its emergence, therefore, as expected. According to
this view, it is not an accident that we are currently concerned with
both eu-genics (‘good’ genetics – good at birth) and eu-thanasia
(‘good’ death – or, perhaps, good at death, that is, of no trouble to
anyone else). We could even expand this connection between genetics
and euthanasia. This expansion could stem from a new perception
that we have the ability to ensure our genetic immortality – seeing
ourselves as an immortal gene collection – and, as a result, we could
reduce somewhat our deep anxiety about the annihilation presented
by death. Indeed, a recently emerged group, the transhumanists, whose
members include some recognized scientists, believe that eventually the
new science will enable us to attain immortality.
Our new genetics has also informed us of the connectedness of all life
and of the vast amount of genetic heritage that we share with other
animal species. This knowledge has led some to ask why we should regard
ourselves as sacred if we do not regard these other species as sacred. In
fact, Princeton bioethicist Peter Singer has given a label to the practice of
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
31
distinguishing between humans and other animals. He calls it ‘speciesism’
– a form of wrongful discrimination. Some people, especially those with
traditional religious beliefs, are outraged by equating humans with other
animals. I suggest that we should see all life as sacred – that is, as requiring
profound respect – but human life as demanding a special degree of
respect.
The frameworks that we use to structure our knowledge, in general, have
always been inﬂuenced by scientiﬁc advances. For instance, Darwin’s
theory of evolution and the survival of the ﬁttest has affected ﬁelds
as diverse as sociology, psychology, political science and economics.
Advances in genetics and molecular biology are likewise inﬂuencing
ﬁelds well beyond the borders of the science of genetics. New schools of
thought that are inﬂuenced by genetics are emerging. These new ideas
can challenge our traditional concepts of what it means to be human
and what is required to respect human life. For instance, sociobiology
asks us to see the characteristics that we have usually identiﬁed as the
unique markers of being human and as differentiating us from the
other animals – namely, our most intimate, humane, altruistic and
moral impulses – as also being the products of the evolution of our
genes. At a macro-genetic level, deep concern about overpopulation
of the Earth, unlike the fears of extinction of the human species
through underpopulation in earlier ages, might have thrust us
towards losing a sense of sacredness in relation to human life.
The new science can, however, be linked with eliciting a sense
of the sacred; it just depends on how we view it. For example,
rather than viewing the new genetics as a totally comprehensive
explanation of life, we can experience it as deepening our sense
of wonder and awe not only at that which we now know, but
even more powerfully at that which we now know that we do
not know. We can thus see the new genetics and the rest of our
science as only one of the lenses through which we are able to
search for ‘the truth’ or, more accurately, ‘all truths’. In short,
we must place science in a broad human perspective and view
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
32
it within this context and not, as we have been doing, place
human life in a narrow scientiﬁc perspective.
Instead, we should take an approach that is captured in a
Japanese saying: As the radius of knowledge increases, the
circumference of ignorance expands. The more we know, the
more we know the extent of that which we do not know. I
often think of new knowledge as a laser beam going out
into the dark unknown, opening up a path that we can see
and follow but, in doing so, increasing the area of darkness of
which we then become aware. Recognition of this darkness,
this unknowingness, can connect us with a sense of mystery.
Ironically, this means that our scientiﬁc discoveries could increase
our awareness of mystery, not destroy it. It all depends upon how
we view what we learn.
Some people may have a ‘So what?’ reaction to another change in
our societies, yet another group of losses, those of a sense of wonder
and of awe, of play and of humour. They may even welcome the loss
of some of them. But these losses could impoverish our ethical sense.
By a sense of play, I mean the childlike, but not childish, feeling that all
is right with the world, even though we do not feel we are in control of
it. We often make ethical mistakes when we seek certainty – a sense of
control – in situations that are necessarily uncertain. Could our intense
need for control be connected with a loss of a sense of play? And could
this loss result from an undue emphasis on reason to the exclusion of
imagination and intuition as ways of knowing? Does this mean that we
should be concerned about a loss of the moral imagination and intuition
that is essential in doing ethics?
Similarly, should we be concerned about a loss of a sense of humour in
its deep meaning of a sense of balance and wise perspective in relation to
any particular issue? This sense gives us access to common sense and good
judgement, which are crucial faculties in doing ethics, especially in relation
to the new science.
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
33
We are also highly materialist, consumeristic societies, and our search for ethics
could help to avert the threats this behaviour presents. Intense materialism
creates a danger that people can be equated to products and treated
accordingly. For instance, if worn-out people are equated with worn-out
products, the people can then be seen simply as a ‘disposal’ problem. This
view would favour euthanasia. Intense materialism would likewise favour
the use of human embryos as therapeutic products for the beneﬁt of
others. And, if we see our children as products, especially products that
reﬂect on our worth and status – as designer logos are seen to do – we
are likely to want to design them to fulﬁl high standards of physical
attractiveness and intelligence through genetic manipulation. This, of
course, raises major ethical issues.
Yet another change relevant to the emergence of the search for ethics
is the use, in some instances, of capitalism (perhaps as a substitute
for religion or even a substitute religion itself, a ‘secular religion’) in
the formation of societal values in secular Western democracies. For
instance, some people, including some prominent scientists who
do not want to have any explicit ethical restrictions placed on their
pursuit of knowledge, argue that the ‘morality of the market place’
will – and should be allowed to – regulate their science. According to
this view, members of the public must be assumed to be moral, and,
therefore, it is argued, they will not purchase or use technologies
that they consider to be ethically unacceptable. The adherents of
this belief propose that the market place can function to ensure
ethics: Immoral or unethical uses of new technologies will not
be commercially viable. But this approach requires the market to
bear a moral weight it is not designed or employed to support.
Moreover, even if the market place could act as a moral arbiter,
what effect would advertising have on its ability to function in
this way?
That said, and without detracting from a belief that market-place
morality is an inadequate ethical regulator, the philosophical
underpinnings of the market may be changing in a way that
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
34
could be ethically relevant. If, as some commentators believe,
we are moving from an age of materialism to one of post-
materialism with regard to our pre-eminent values, business,
especially the scientiﬁc-industrial complex, needs a new bottom
line, whether we describe this as ‘new capitalism’, ‘the third
way’, or ‘post-capitalism’. This new bottom line will not abandon
the component of the old single bottom line, that of proﬁt, but
it will integrate it with protection of the environment, concern
for maintaining a sense of community and social cohesion, and
ethics. The idea that bad ethics is bad business is, it appears,
becoming more broadly accepted, not only in theory, but also in
practice. It might even be that this fourfold combination will prove
to be a ‘fourth way’, one that takes account of the need to protect
and foster the human spirit.
The above discussion leads to an important insight: We are searching
for a new world view as a basis for a new societal-cultural paradigm.
There are, I propose, three competing possibilities, each of which has
a very different relationship to the new science.
The ﬁrst is the ‘pure science’ view, which takes a position that science
does, or will be able to, explain everything, including those characteristics
such as altruism and morality that we regard as distinguishing us from
other animals and most clearly identifying us as human. This profoundly
biological view of human life is a gene-machine approach. It seeks
meaning in human life mainly or only through science and similarly seeks
to exercise control through science. Such control can be implemented
through the development and use of technologies that scientiﬁc discoveries
make possible – the tangible reality of science – and at a more inchoate
level through the use of the language and concepts of science. What it
means to be human and the meaning of human life are seen and explained
only in terms of scientiﬁc constructs. Genetic reductionism and an exclusive
focus on sociobiology (our biology explains all that we are and can become
with regard to our behaviour) to explain human aspirations and behaviour
are two examples of such an approach. The pure science view is intolerant
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
35
of the belief that there is a mystery in human existence – which often results
in the negation of a sense of wonder – and within its parameters there is no
recognized space for spirit.
The proponents of this view are comfortable with the use of reproductive
technologies and with euthanasia, seeing most decisions concerning
reproduction or one’s own death as personal matters involving only
individual values and preferences. The gene-machine approach to
reproduction is epitomized by a development in Britain. It has been
reported that a private clinic was offering women having abortions the
option of storing their fetuses in liquid nitrogen so that they may later use
a cell from the fetus and the cloning technique that produced the sheep
Dolly to create an embryo genetically identical to the aborted fetus. The
fetus is not a unique human being but becomes a replaceable object
– one that will be reconstructed when it is convenient to do so. The
gene-machine approach is also operative, although in a less obvious
and dramatic way, in practices that commercialize the human body
or human reproduction, such as the buying and selling of human
gametes or embryos, or for-proﬁt surrogate motherhood.
The gene-machine approach to euthanasia can be summed up in
the words of one Australian politician who, speaking in favour of
it, said, ‘When we are past our “best-before” or “use-by” date, we
should be disposed of as quickly, cheaply, efﬁciently and painlessly
as possible.’ This approach equates dying people to stale products
in a super-market. The tone of such extreme versions of the
gene-machine view can also be captured in the image of human
embryos as products in a supermarket.
In contrast, the second view, the ‘pure mystery’ view, often decries
science or is expressly anti-scientiﬁc (as can be seen, for example,
in the creationists’ legal suits against teaching evolutionary
biology in schools). This view adopts an intense sanctity-of-
life stance, which can be compared to and contrasted with
respect or reverence for life, and with respect or reverence for
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
36
death. For instance, many people who hold a pure mystery
view believe that all medical treatment must be continued until
no vestige of life remains. These same people could also have
moral difﬁculties with providing necessary pain-relief treatment
that could or would shorten life. Often, this view is derived from
fundamentalist religious beliefs. It seeks meaning, and likewise
control, through religion. This view does encompass a sense of
wonder, but the wonder is not elicited by the new science, which
is seen as frightening, at best, and possibly evil.
In her book The Battle for God, Karen Armstrong, a leading
commentator and teacher on religious affairs, says that the
fundamentalist movement is, at least on the surface, an anti-
modernist movement; it is based on an intense fear of modernism
and is a rejection of it. Because science is associated with modernism,
especially in its emphasis on reason to the exclusion of other ways of
knowing, we can expect that science would be feared and rejected.
Fundamentalists fear modernism because they see it as annihilating
them. Armstrong compares and contrasts access to knowledge through
logos (science) and mythos (myths). The fundamentalists are returning
to mythos, that is, earlier beliefs, but to a very literal interpretation of
the myths on which these beliefs were based. People in previous ages
realized that these myths were meant to function as ways of access to
the psyche, but now these myths and the beliefs to which they give
rise are being treated literally. It is not surprising, therefore, that the
views of these fundamentalists are incompatible with those based on
contemporary science. Armstrong goes on to explain, however, that at
a deeper level the fundamentalist movement is essentially a modernizing
movement: It is a way in which people who ﬁnd the modern frightening
and threatening can make a transition to the modern. It is important to add
here that that transition does not require them to abandon their religious
beliefs, but rather will result in their accommodating them in new ways.
The ‘science-spirit’ view, the third view, seeks a structure to hold both science
and the human spirit. For some people, this view is expressed through
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
37
religion, but it can be, and possibly for most people is, held independently
of being religious, at least in a traditional sense. It recognizes that human
life consists of more than its biological component, wondrous as this is. It
also involves a sense of mystery – made up of at least the mystery of the
unknown or the mystery of the nameless, or both – of which we have a sense
through our intuitions, especially our moral intuitions, and accepts that we
should respect this mystery. This world view includes a sense of a space
for the (human) spirit and of the secular sacred. This view experiences our
new science as eliciting wonder at both what we know and, as a result,
what we now know that we do not know. It seeks meaning through a
combination of science and spirit, which could create a different reality
from the other two views.
We can compare and contrast these views. The pure science and pure
mystery views represent opposite poles on a spectrum and as a result
tend to be two-dimensional or linear. In contrast, the tension created
through seeking a combination of science and spirit might create a
third dimension – a space for human spirit, one that also fosters our
imagination and creativity.
The pure science view operates from a basic presumption of doubt
(although an alternative view is that it operates from a presumption
of faith in science and that which science reveals, which brings it
very close to a religion – or substitute for one, that is, scientism
– or an ideology). The pure mystery view operates from a basic
presumption of faith in revealed doctrine (revelation). Paradoxically,
to the extent that revelation offers an explanation, for instance, of
the origin of the universe or the purpose of human life, it could
be seen as reducing a sense of mystery. Adherents of both the
pure science and the pure mystery views believe that their basic
presumption is the only correct one and that the other’s view is
wrong. It can be argued, however, that the approach taken to
forming a world view by the proponents of each of these views
is identical, and it is just the content of each view that differs
radically from the other. In contrast, the basic presumption
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
38
of the science-spirit view is more difﬁcult to identify and the
approach taken to forming it differs from that of the other
two views. Perhaps it is best described as an openness to all
ways of knowing, a comfort with uncertainty, ambiguity and
paradox, and the courage to admit that one does not know
and to change one’s mind. It is a complex, active, constantly
changing interweaving of certainty and uncertainty – with the
certain open to becoming uncertain, and vice versa. I hasten to
add that this is not equivalent to adopting a situational ethics or
pure moral relativist approach – that is, the view that nothing is
inherently wrong, it all depends on the circumstances. Recognition
of unavoidable uncertainty is not incompatible with regarding
some things as inherently wrong.
Those who subscribe to the science-spirit view may also be less likely
to seek control than adherents of the other two views, probably
because this view recognizes that it is less certain; indeed, it has
respect for uncertainty and requires us to act in situations that involve
uncertainty, under a precautionary ethical principle.
Most importantly, the science-spirit view recognizes that there is more
that we can do with our new science than what we ought to do, so it
opens up the debate on what we should and should not do. For instance,
under this view, we could regard certain genetic interventions on a
human embryo as acceptable (for example, those aimed at therapy for
that embryo), but others – for example, those involving alteration of the
human germ cell line (the fundamental genetic inheritance that is passed
from generation to generation) or human cloning – as inherently wrong.
This view would also accept both refusals of treatment and the provision
of necessary pain-relief treatment even if it might shorten life, but reject
physician-assisted suicide and euthanasia. This view requires the courage to
live with the uncertainty that making such distinctions involves.
The science-spirit view recognizes there are many questions we must
ask about any given issue, but that there may be no one right answer. Its
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
Searching
for Ethics in a
Secular Society
39
fundamental premise is that it is only through an undivided science-spirit
approach that it will be possible to tell a collective story – to create a societal-
cultural paradigm – of sufﬁcient depth, breadth and width to capture our
collective mind, heart and imagination. It will be the greatest challenge of
the twenty-ﬁrst century to realize the potential of this view. That is why we
are now searching for ethics, especially in relation to the new science.
References
Armstrong, K. 2000. The Battle for God. New York, Alfred Knopf.
Fukuyama, F. 1999. The Great Disruption: Human nature and the reconstitution of
social order. London, Free Press.
Hein, G. 2000. Interest group litigation and Canadian democracy. Choices IRPP
(Institute for Research in Public Policy), Vol. 6, No. 2, pp. 3-30.
Katz, Jay. 1984. The Silent World of Doctor and Patient. New York, Free Press.
Saul, John Ralston. 1995. The Unconscious Civilization. Concord, Ont., Anansi.
Singer, P. 1990. Animal Liberation, rev. ed. New York, Avon Books.
Somerville, M. A. 1992. Law as an ‘art form’ reﬂecting AIDS: A challenge to
the province and function of law. Fluid Exchanges: Artists and Critics in the AIDS
Crisis, Miller, J. (ed.). Toronto, University of Toronto Press, pp. 287-304.
_________. 1992. Messages from three contemporary images of medicine:
Failed medicine, miracle medicine and science ﬁction medicine. From the
Twilight of Probability: Ethics and politics, Shea, W. R. and Spadafora, A. (eds).
Cambridge, Mass., Science History Publications, pp. 91-105.
_________. 1995. Planet as patient. Journal of Ecosystem Health, Vol. 1, pp. 61-71.
Wright, R. 1994. The Moral Animal: Evolutionary psychology and everyday life.
New York, Pantheon Books.
Yankelovich, D. 1996. Trends in American Cultural Values. Criterion,
August, pp. 2-9.
C h a p t e r 3
Margaret A. Somerville
The Ethics of Immortalizing
Our Genetic Selves
The ethics of human cloning has been on the public agenda since the
birth of Dolly, the cloned sheep. Cloning techniques make possible
both the creation of genetically identical human beings and of tissues,
organs or cell lines (a homogeneous group of cells derived from a
single sample of cells from a tissue or organ) that are genetically the
same as the donor. We can clone higher animals and, therefore,
in all probability will be able to clone humans. Human cloning
can be undertaken for two reasons: to produce children who are
genetically identical to the cell donor (human reproductive cloning),
or to produce embryos for research or to manufacture therapeutic
products, including tissues or organs for transplantation (human
therapeutic cloning).
Our ethical reaction to the new genetic technologies often starts
with what philosopher and ethicist Professor Arthur Schaefer of
the University of Manitoba has called an ethical ‘yuck factor’.
Many people had such a reaction to the possibility of human
cloning. But as our familiarity with these new technologies
* Adapted from Chapter 3 of The Ethical Canary: Science, society and
the human spirit. Somerville, M. A. 2000. Toronto, Canada, Viking.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
42
increases and our dread decreases, we may move from ethical
rejection and horror to ethical neutrality and ethical acceptance
– usually with safeguards – and ﬁnally to positive approval of
the new technology, especially if we see it as offering major
beneﬁts.
This slippery slope to acceptance of ideas we once viewed with
disgust starts with familiarity and overcoming dread, factors that
can be linked with moral intuition. Therefore, we need to be careful
in allowing these changes to occur and not to suppress our moral
intuition; we may have to consciously prevent familiarity and the
loss of dread regarding scientiﬁc developments from dulling our
ethical intuitions about these discoveries. And since these intuitions
are often manifested as a sense of anxiety, we should not ignore
this anxiety.
But some eminent scientists do not agree. They see such anxiety as
pathological. They understand the world and human life through
science only. They espouse a gene-machine or pure science view of
human life and a world view based on it. They do not respect ways of
knowing other than reason (although scientiﬁc discovery depends on
these other ways, especially on creativity, imagination and intuition).
Moreover, these scientists tend not to see science’s profound impact
on our metaphysical reality, especially its human spirit dimension.
Indeed, most do not even recognize that this reality exists or, if they
do, that it can be damaged. As sociologist Professor Howard Kaye says,
the nearest they come to acknowledging the potential for damage is
when they admit that the new science raises ‘reasonable concerns about
potential psychological and social harm’. They believe, however, that
these concerns are counterbalanced by other values supporting individual
choice and freedom of scientiﬁc enquiry and ‘the good’ that they see their
science as being capable of delivering.
These scientists regard people who oppose human cloning as doing so on
the basis of ‘deep cultural prejudice’ – to use the words of Professor Richard
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
43
Lewontin, professor of zoology at Harvard University – and sheer ignorance
of biology. They believe, as Kaye reports, that ‘the fear that human cloning
may prove dehumanizing and therefore ought to be banned is simply the
hysterical reaction of the modern-day “Luddites” held in thrall by “ancient
theological scruples” which must be swept aside so that scientiﬁc progress
and human liberation may proceed.’ In other words, they believe that
any opposition to their science is largely based on ignorance rather than
insight. Consequently, they see the solution to this opposition as better
science education.
These scientists would accept, for instance, a short-term ban in order
to have time to correct ‘public misconceptions’ about the science and
to minimize safety risks, which they see as the only real concern. They
see voluntary moratoriums on human cloning as the least threatening
way to accommodate what they regard as unreasonable fears on the
part of the public. They bolster their approach with statements that
the public’s fears are based on science ﬁction and with long litanies
of the good that will result from the technology, such as providing
infertile couples with children, or saving dying children through the
transplantation of tissues or organs.
These scientists dismiss the public’s widespread moral intuitions
against human cloning. Kaye describes this dismissal as blocking
moral judgement and the public’s moral opposition. He makes the
very important point that
apprehensions [on the part of the public] so nearly universal in expression
– that cloning constitutes a threat to the dignity and sanctity of human
life – ought not to be dismissed so cavalierly. ... The claim of cloning’s
supporters, that the anxieties experienced [by the public] may be
safely ignored because they will soon diminish as they always have
done before, is ... profoundly misguided. These anxieties may indeed
diminish as panic gives way to temptation or fatalism, but the price
of such accommodation may seriously reduce our worth as human
beings.
Kaye also argues that the scenarios the public construct of the
mad scientist who will use cloning or the multiple clones of
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
44
the mad dictator may indeed be ‘misconceptions of science
but the dangers which they sense so viscerally may be very real
indeed’. In other words, our anxieties may be needed to guide
our moral responses to this science. It is not enough simply to
look at the consequences of our actions, we also need ‘clarity
about the ultimate meaning of our actions’.
Moreover, we must ensure, as health lawyer and ethicist
Professor George Annas warns, that individual scientists do not
‘act ﬁrst and consider the human consequences later’. In human
cloning, society faces the necessity to make moral choices and
other important decisions without having had actual experience
with this technology and despite a lack of knowledge regarding at
least some of its risks. Making these decisions must, therefore, call
upon the ‘other’ ways of knowing: intuition, common sense, human
memory (history), ethics, imagination and creativity, and ‘examined
emotions’, and not just reason as the scientists who want to carry out
human cloning propose.
So keeping in mind the general scene just described, in which the
human cloning debate is taking place, what are the facts? What is
involved in human cloning? In this area, in particular, good ethics
depend upon good facts.
How are clones created? We could clone humans who have already
been born, human embryos, or organs, tissues or cells. Even these latter
types of cloning can involve human embryos. Human cloning involving
embryos could occur in three ways: through the transfer of the nucleus
of an adult cell into an enucleated human ovum (the ‘Dolly technique’,
somatic cell nuclear transfer [SCNT]) to create an embryo; through
embryo splitting, which occurs naturally with identical twins, triplets or
quadruplets, but which can also be undertaken in the laboratory with
embryos that would not have divided naturally; and through cloning from
human embryo stem cells (primordial cells capable of forming any part of
the human body) taken from embryos. Sometimes, all three procedures are
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
45
grouped together and referred to collectively as human cloning. There are,
however, differences among them, some of which are ethically relevant.
The ﬁrst two methods can result in an identical person; in the last, only
organs or tissues genetically identical to the donor of the stem cell can
do so. In the latter two methods, the clones are genetically identical; in
the ﬁrst, the clone’s mitochondrial DNA, which comes from the donor of
the enucleated ovum, differs from that of the person who donated the
somatic cell (a cell that is not a reproductive cell, that is, not a gamete
– an ovum or a sperm).
The Dolly technique involves taking an ovum (an egg) and removing its
nucleus with the DNA (the genes) that it contains – the ovum is then
empty except for the mitochondrial DNA in the cytoplasm (the liquid)
of the ovum. (The mitochondrial DNA is passed through the maternal
line from generation to generation unchanged, it was thought, except
by mutation. But some very recent research indicates that sperm might
have an effect on it.) Then a somatic cell is taken from the person who
is to be cloned. Every cell of our bodies contains all our genes. The
genes from this somatic cell are placed into the enucleated ovum.
This new cell is then treated in such a way that it starts to function
as a human embryo. It will be the clone of the donor of the somatic
cell.
Human cloning can be undertaken for one or other of two
purposes. The goal of human reproductive cloning is to produce
a child. Human therapeutic cloning involves producing embryo
clones through either the Dolly technique or embryo splitting,
then using either the embryos or stem cells from the resulting
embryos as ‘living human tissue generators’ or for other research
purposes. These stem cells can also be cloned.
What are the facts about human embryonic cells? The cells of
the very early embryo are totipotential, that is, they have the
potential to function as another human embryo and can each
give rise to an entire new being. They are also pluripotential,
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
46
that is, they can be manipulated to produce any tissue or organ.
Although every cell in our body contains all of our genes, at
an early stage, the genes in each cell differentiate so that, for
example, our liver cells express only the liver genes they contain,
or our skin, only the skin genes – the other genes in the liver or
skin cells remain silent. After differentiation, a cell can form only
the tissues or organs for which it has been differentiated – unless
it is de-differentiated using the Dolly technique.
Human embryonic stem cells are taken from a human embryo at
about the one hundred-cell stage. They are no longer totipotential
but are still pluripotential, that is, they can be caused to differentiate
into a certain tissue or organ. Taking stem cells from an embryo
necessarily destroys it.
To summarize: Up until a certain stage, each cell of a human embryo
can form another embryo; every embryo forms stem cells within it;
taking stem cells from an embryo destroys the embryo; stem cells
cannot function as an embryo; and stem cells can be cloned.
We must ask: What is the moral status of a human embryo, of embryos
cloned from another embryo, and of human embryonic stem cells
collected in the way described? Some people believe that the human
embryo has full human moral status, others that it has special moral
status, and a few that it has no moral status.
Those who believe that it has full human moral status argue that, from its
earliest beginnings, all human life deserves the same respect. Therefore,
they believe that we must not undertake any research that is not intended
as necessary therapy for the embryo on which it is carried out. The embryo
is human life with potential as we all are until we die.
People who believe that the human embryo has special moral status as the
earliest form of human life, but not (yet) the same status as the rest of
us, would allow human embryo research under certain conditions. They
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
47
would prohibit creating human embryos just to carry out research on them
and would permit it only on ‘spare embryos’, those left over from in vitro
fertilization procedures. And they would limit research on human embryos
to the ﬁrst fourteen days of cell division after fertilization. These people
reject the view that it is inherently wrong to carry out research on human
embryos, but seem to accept that it is inherently wrong to create them
for this purpose – to do so shows a basic disrespect for human life. They
might also be objecting to the creation of embryos just for human use or
simply as a research tool because to do so harms important values and
symbolism attached to human life, especially the most vulnerable forms
of human life, of which embryos are a prime example.
Other people believe that it is morally acceptable to create human
embryos for research purposes. They usually justify their stance on
the grounds that while human embryos are of human origin and,
as such, have special moral status and deserve respect, this status
does not prohibit research on them. They point out that the embryo
is not a conscious being who can suffer pain and that great good
could come from the research. They see human embryos as potential
human life.
Those who do not believe that the human embryo has any special
moral status would create and use them for research as they
would any other tissue of human origin. This view was forcefully
presented by molecular and evolutionary biologist Professor Lee
Silver of Princeton University at a conference I attended in Squaw
Valley, California. I had given a presentation outlining the case
against human cloning, and in the course of this talk, I argued
for recognizing the moral status of the human embryo. Professor
Silver followed me as a speaker to present the case for human
cloning and embryo research. He stood before the audience,
melodramatically took out a tissue and blew his nose into it.
Without saying anything, he held it up to the audience, who
were watching him attentively. He then said, ‘This tissue has
cells on it from the inside of my nose. I would like Margo
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
48
Somerville to understand that I believe that these cells have
the same moral status as human embryos.’
To summarize: When we disagree on the moral status of
human embryos, we disagree on the ethics of human embryo
research. Human cloning necessarily involves research on
human embryos. Therefore, the different views on the moral
status of human embryos and human embryo research translate
into different attitudes about the ethics of human cloning, quite
apart from any other factors that might cause us to differ in our
views on the ethics of cloning. We should keep in mind that our
approach to human cloning, embryo research, abortion, and the
use of fetuses in research or as a source of organs or tissues for
transplantation are all intimately connected.
We can test the inherent wrongness of human cloning from a
secular base by asking two questions related to the two fundamental
principles that I suggested previously should guide our decisions
about ethics: Does human cloning contravene respect for human
life? And would carrying out such cloning damage our sense of the
human spirit – by which, as I explained in Chapter 2, I mean the
essential, intangible, invisible, unmeasurable reality we need to live
fully human lives, that ‘non-physical entity’ through which we ﬁnd a
sense of meaning in our lives? If it does either, it is inherently wrong.
Insights about what respect for human life and the human spirit requires
in relation to human cloning can come from diverse sources. For instance,
Kaye bases his stance against human reproductive cloning on concepts
articulated by Emile Durkheim in his book Suicide. Durkheim refers to the
belief in the inherent dignity and worth of human life as ‘the religion of
humanity’ and concludes that it is the only cohesive bond in a diverse and
secular world. He regards this belief as the last one that ‘unites us as a human
community and serves as the essential basis of our social and moral order’.
The famous French philosopher Paul Ricœur sums up the same approach
in a few simple but powerful words: Something is owed to human beings
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
49
simply because they are human. This religion of humanity is almost certainly
the non-negotiable minimum without which we cannot form a viable human
society – or at least not one in which most of us would think it was worthwhile
living. It requires that we have respect for each individual human life and
human life in general, and, I propose, for the essence of human life, itself
(the human germ cell line), and the transmission of human life. Human
cloning challenges us on all of these bases.
However, even if we were all to agree that we must have respect for
human life in all these senses, we are likely to disagree as to what
should be allowed and disallowed if we are to maintain such respect.
In particular, we will disagree whether human cloning – reproductive
or therapeutic – is inherently disrespectful of human life. For instance,
what does respect for human genetic diversity require and does human
cloning breach these requirements?
As a society – indeed, as a global community – we must respect the
integrity of the human gene pool, which we hold in trust for future
generations. Because of our new scientiﬁc powers to intervene
and change this gene pool, we are faced with decisions no other
people have ever confronted. Many people believe that we must
not interfere with the human gene pool – or, at the very least, not
wrongfully interfere with it – because it is the common heritage of
humankind and it would be wrong for us to change that heritage.
Such a view reﬂects a secular-sacred approach to the human
gene pool. Just from the perspective of practical survival, genetic
diversity is important to ensure the integrity and resilience of the
human gene pool and, therefore, of human life. Some people
might respond that we would never be able to reduce its diversity
to the extent that it would matter in this regard. But even if that
is true, genetic diversity is also important for individuals. It is
an amazing thought that for every person who has ever lived
(genetically identical sibs aside), there has never in the past been
anyone genetically identical to that person and never will be in
the future unless the person is cloned. This genetic uniqueness
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
50
is also important in relation to upholding the societal value
of respect for persons: It helps to prevent us from regarding
individuals as replaceable commodities and losing respect for
people, in general, in doing so.
If we decided that human cloning is inherently wrong, it would
mean that cloning must not be undertaken no matter how
beneﬁcial the consequences of using it could be. Prohibiting a
procedure that could be the only hope of saving life or avoiding
horrible suffering, or that could help people to have a child and
that some do not regard as wrong, can be seen as breaching norms
of both compassion and tolerance. These are some of the many
forces that indicate it will be difﬁcult to ﬁnd a strong consensus
that we should prohibit human cloning and, if we were to achieve
this agreement, to enforce such a prohibition. Let’s look at some of
these arguments, starting with intense individualism.
Intense individualism is one of the powerful, current trends that favour
a situational ethics approach to human cloning. Intense individualism
encourages us to focus on individuals’ rights to autonomy and
self-determination, with societal interests – the common good – if
considered at all, taking a subordinate place. Infertile people who
want to have their ‘own’ genetically related child can make powerful
emotional arguments that they should not be prevented from doing so
through cloning. Likewise, desperately ill people or those with diseases
that cause great suffering, such as Alzheimer’s or Parkinson’s, can make
it extraordinarily difﬁcult to argue against human therapeutic cloning
– to argue that it is inherently wrong – when it could offer them chances
of treatment or even cure.
The predominance of intense individualism has given rise to a concern
that, as a result, we have lost a sense of community. In the last few years,
another concern has been added to this, that we have also lost a sense of the
common good. For instance, philosopher and ethicist Dr Daniel Callahan
criticized the United States National Bioethics Advisory Commission’s report
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
51
on human cloning precisely on the grounds that the report focused only
on risks to individuals and failed to take into account the requirements of
protection and promotion of the common good and the harmful impact
that allowing human cloning would have on the common good. The
commission proposed placing a moratorium on human reproductive
cloning, not a permanent prohibition of it. Callahan believes that this
recommendation shows a failure to understand what is needed to protect
the common good.
Some versions of reproductive rights also favour reproductive cloning.
The proponents of these rights claim that reproduction is a private
matter involving only individuals and their choices, and these choices
must not be interfered with by others. Cloning can be seen as simply
another reproductive choice that can be justiﬁed by the free and fully
informed consent of the person who wants to be cloned. (Although
the clone’s consent is not obtained, of course.) The basic philosophy
behind the doctrine of informed consent is respect for people’s rights
to autonomy and self-determination. Provided, therefore, that people
understand what they are doing – especially the risks involved –
they should, as far as possible, the argument goes, be allowed to
do what they want. This approach means that consent functions
as not only a necessary safeguard, but also as a sufﬁcient one. It
maximizes individual liberty, even when this is at the expense of
other values.
In making choices about whether to prohibit certain reproductive
technologies such as human cloning, we need to keep in mind
that we are facing the technological imperative – that is, ‘have
technology, must use it’ – in one of its most dangerous forms.
I suggest that the most appropriate comparison is with the
discovery of nuclear ﬁssion and the development of the atomic
bomb. In a 1947 speech given at MIT, T. Robert Oppenheimer,
one of the scientists who developed the atomic bombs that
were dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, said, ‘In some sort of
crude sense which no vulgarity, no humour, no overstatement
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
52
can quite extinguish, the physicists have known sin; this is a
knowledge which they cannot lose.’
This statement raises the question: ‘Could we gain important
ethical insights about human cloning by considering whether
it is evil?’ Professor Upendra Baxi, a distinguished Indian jurist
and human rights activist, developed a concept he calls the
functionalization of evil, and it is relevant to this enquiry. Baxi
argues that one of the dangers in our present world is that we
have lost a sense of evil and that, in part, this has occurred because
when evil happens we tend to focus only on the good that comes
out of it and, in the process, lose a sense of the evil that was involved.
We may be in danger of doing this in relation to human cloning.
If it is intrinsically morally wrong to clone humans, whether for
therapeutic or reproductive purposes, we must somehow maintain
a sense that it would be evil to do so, no matter how much good
could come out of it.
In two other respects, Oppenheimer’s statement also merits thorough
consideration in relation to both forms of human cloning: First, is it
correct that, as scientists have traditionally argued, science is value-
free and that we should never place restrictions on the discovery of
knowledge? And, second, can we foresee the harm human cloning
would cause and, even if we could, could we control it?
The idea that science is value-free, that there is an absolute right to freedom
of scientiﬁc enquiry and it is wrong to restrict scientiﬁc research, leads
to a conclusion that research on human cloning should not be inhibited.
The traditional view that science itself is value-free has been increasingly
challenged in the last few years and, as a result, is now largely abandoned.
That is especially true in the context of the life sciences, because of the
possibility that they could become the death sciences if they were to be
used in the cause of bioterrorism. More and more people believe that if
scientists can see that immense harm would result from their discoveries,
they have ethical obligations not to pursue them. For instance, biological
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
53
warfare research can be regarded as inherently wrong and therefore it must
not be undertaken. But not everyone agrees. They argue that science is
value-neutral, and it is only when we apply it that ethics comes into play.
Scientists are often concerned that ethics will inhibit them in pursuing
scientiﬁc knowledge, and the split between so-called pure and applied
science has been used to avoid ethics being applied to pure science.
But ethics must be embedded in science at all stages of discovery and
development. When we see the mind- and world-altering power of the
scientiﬁc discoveries of just the last ten years, it should be piercingly clear
that we cannot afford to have ethics simply as an add-on or afterthought.
Power entails responsibility, requiring that we embed ethics in every
aspect of science. To give just one example of value-laden pure science,
using human embryos as research material or making human-animal
hybrids to carry out research on them is not a value-neutral activity and
must be governed by ethics.
A common argument also put forward is that there is no point in trying
to ‘stop’ new and controversial techniques, such as human cloning,
because they will go forward regardless of whether they are regarded
as ethically acceptable (unless, of course, everyone considered them
to be ethically unacceptable and personally refrained from using
them). If this view is correct, it reﬂects our society’s moral or ethical
bankruptcy – which it is deeply disturbing to think might have
occurred. Moreover, just because human cloning is inevitable and
uncontrollable does not mean that we should not try to stop it
if we believe it is ethically wrong, any more than, as Annas says,
‘a recognition that controlling terrorism or biological weapons is
difﬁcult and uncertain, [does not justify] ... making no attempt
at control.’
A useful analogy to law can be made here. The vast majority
of people do obey the law: If they did not, the law would be
ineffective. The same is true for ethical rules. Consequently, the
fact that some people do not comply with them, as indeed
some people do not comply with the law, should not make
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
54
us despair of the effectiveness of these rules or disregard the
necessity for them. Moreover, as is true with law, we usually
notice only where ethical requirements are not effective, not the
harms they prevent.
We should also be careful that this ‘impossible-to-stop’ argument
is not simply one way to argue against placing any restrictions
on scientiﬁc research. A particular aspect of this argument is
encountered when corporations invest very large amounts of
money in scientiﬁc research, such as human cloning, that raises
major ethical problems. This investment creates pressure not
to restrict – and certainly not to abandon – the research, even
when restriction or abandonment is ethically required. Further
complications and difﬁculties in this regard are generated by
the intertwining of universities, industry and government in the
research enterprise. This intertwining can result in a situation in
which no institution is free of conﬂict of interest and can ensure that
what is done is ethical. In short, ethics is captured by the research
enterprise.
Finally, another factor favouring human cloning is that it offers more
than the usual promise of some sort of temporal immortality – that of
one’s genome – and, even more so than natural reproduction, of
genetic immortality. This promise might be important to some people
who no longer believe in the supernatural.
I am not sure we will ever agree as a society that there is a ‘right’ answer
about the ethics of human cloning – certainly of therapeutic cloning,
although we might agree to prohibit reproductive cloning. The problem
is, to return to a previous theme, that for many people the risks and harms
they take into account in deciding whether they are ethically justiﬁed in
running or imposing risks and harms do not extend to damage to our
most important human values and our sense of the meaning of human life.
Moreover, even were we to agree on what we should do ethically, would we
actually follow that course?
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
55
Human therapeutic cloning
Let’s turn now to consider the ethics of human therapeutic cloning more
speciﬁcally. Both human embryos and embryonic stem cells can be cloned
– that is, multiple copies can be made. Questions this raises include these:
If one believes that it is ethically acceptable to use spare embryos for
research, is it acceptable to make multiple embryos, as long as one starts
with a spare embryo? Do prohibitions or restrictions on embryo research
apply to the use of embryonic stem cells? Does the source of the stem
cell matter and, even if it does, does it matter once the cell has been
isolated? For example, if we believe that it is not ethically acceptable
to create human embryos from gametes taken from aborted fetuses, is
it ethically acceptable to use a cloned cell line developed from such a
human embryo? Or, if we believe that abortion is ethically unacceptable,
is it ethically acceptable to collect stem cells from aborted fetuses for
use in human therapeutic cloning or to use cells cloned from these
stem cells? If we have ethical reservations about abortion, does this
mean that research using stem cells derived from an aborted fetus is
not ethically acceptable? Morally, can we separate these cells from
their origin in abortion?
Is human therapeutic cloning inherently wrong? And, if not, or if
we use just a situational ethics approach, is it ethically acceptable?
If using human embryos for therapeutic cloning is inherently
wrong, we must not do it, no matter how much good could be
achieved. The extraordinary medical beneﬁts that could result
would not be a justiﬁcation for the use of human embryos. To
use human embryos just as an instrument for doing good for the
rest of us damages respect for both human life and the reality
that constitutes the human spirit. We cannot regard a human
embryo as wondrous and use it simply as an object on which
to carry out research that is not intended to beneﬁt it or to
provide it with a chance of life. We lose our sense of wonder
and awe at our ethical peril. These senses are very easy to
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
56
damage, especially if we use our new science in certain ways,
and the loss and damage we cause to our metaphysical reality
may well be irreversible. The use of just one embryo for human
therapeutic cloning presents risks to respect for life and for the
human spirit and can harm them.
In the same way, creating multiple embryos from the same
embryo damages respect for human life itself – even if it does
not contravene respect for any one human individual – and
for the transmission of human life. It turns a genetically unique
living being of human origin into just an object and one that
is replicable in multiple copies. It changes the transmission of
human life from a mystery to a manufacturing process. It fails
to recognize that we are not free to treat life in any way we
see ﬁt, that we do not own life. Rather, we have life and, most
importantly, life has us. Recognizing that we owe obligations to
life can provide a basis on which to establish respect for life in a
secular society. This recognition means that we must ask, ‘What
must we not do because to do it would contravene respect for
human life itself?’ I believe that one answer to this question is the
creation or use of human embryos for human therapeutic cloning.
This cloning can, therefore, be regarded as inherently wrong. In
summary, I propose that, even leaving aside any questions of the
abuse of human therapeutic cloning, the intentional creation and
destruction of human embryos it involves could seriously damage
important values and the ‘ethical tone’ of our society.
An alternative analysis for those who reject a concept of inherent wrongness
is one based on situational ethics: Nothing is inherently wrong – it all
depends on the circumstances. Under this approach, in contrast to one
based on inherent wrongness, ‘doing good’ through human therapeutic
cloning can be a justiﬁcation for the unavoidable harm to embryos that
it involves – and possibly for the harm that it does to respect for human
life and the human spirit. Most people who regard human therapeutic
cloning as ethically acceptable do not consider these latter harms to be
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
57
present, however, in the human embryo research that human therapeutic
cloning necessarily involves. Could the reason be that to raise such concerns
would give them validity and, as a consequence, make it difﬁcult to argue
that human embryo research is ethically acceptable? The good focused
on in justifying human embryo research and therapeutic cloning includes
producing organs and tissues for transplantation, repairing severed
nerves, or treating cancer, diabetes, multiple sclerosis, Parkinson’s disease,
Alzheimer’s disease or genetic disorders. It is very hard, and will take great
courage, to refuse such extraordinary beneﬁts.
One reason – a paradoxical one – that it is difﬁcult to ensure that the new
science is ethically acceptable is that it has the potential to do so much
good. There is an old saying in human rights that nowhere are human
rights more threatened than when we act purporting to do good. When
we focus on the good that we are setting out to achieve, we can be blind
to the dangers, risks and harms involved, including ethical harms. This
is probably a companion phenomenon to the functionalization of evil,
discussed previously.
But could human therapeutic cloning also be considered unethical
under a situational ethics approach? To respond requires identifying
the harms of this cloning and balancing them against the beneﬁts.
(We should keep in mind that we will not necessarily agree on what
counts as beneﬁts and harms, and how to weigh them when they
conﬂict, because these decisions are value judgements.)
First, among the harms is the fact that human therapeutic cloning
makes human reproductive cloning more likely and more difﬁcult
to effectively prohibit – it opens up a slippery slope. But this
argument holds only if we believe that human reproductive
cloning should not be undertaken. I discuss this issue in the
next section. Second, human therapeutic cloning (like human
reproductive cloning) opens up the possibilities of genetic
enhancement and disenhancement through alteration of the
human germ-cell line – the units of heredity passed on from
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
58
generation to generation. If we believe that these types of
intervention are wrong, we may not want to make them easier
to achieve. Third, even if we do not regard using human embryos
for research as showing disrespect for individual human life, it
can show disrespect for human life in general. For example,
embryos used in therapeutic cloning have been described, as
mentioned previously, as ‘living human tissue generators’ or, in
stark language, a human-embryo manufacturing plant.
Fourth, therapeutic cloning (again, like reproductive cloning)
also shows disrespect for the transmission of human life and
could affect our sense of wonder about it. Film critic Len Blum,
writing about Stanley Kubrick’s ﬁlm Eyes Wide Shut, says in relation
to the sexual intimacy portrayed in that ﬁlm: ‘Because I believed
the events were real, I savoured every moment. One isn’t aroused
– one is sexualized. Made conscious of sexuality. And since sexuality
is the transmitter of human life, the feeling was akin to becoming
more conscious of life itself.’ What would it mean to some of our
most profound human experiences if we could not only transmit
human life asexually, but also do so for the purposes of setting up a
basic manufacturing process based on this life? Blum’s words should
warn us that what we would lose is highly subtle and nuanced, but
extraordinarily important. The sexual transmission of human life is
integral to our sense, as both individuals and a society, of ourselves and
of the meaning of human life. Can we afford asexual transmission, no
matter what beneﬁts it promises? Human life is not a commodity. Can
we ever afford to make it such?
Ethicists Professor Glenn McGee and Professor Arthur Caplan present
a very sophisticated argument in favour of human embryo stem cell
research, which always involves the destruction of embryos to obtain
the stem cells. The same considerations apply to the use of human
embryos in therapeutic cloning. They propose that the central ethical
question revolves around whether use of the embryo is an acceptable
‘moral sacriﬁce’ of human life. They point out that the moral imperative of
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
59
compassion motivates this stem cell research. (In this way, they distinguish
it from abortion carried out for superﬁcial reasons.) They assume, for the
purposes of argument, that the one hundred-cell human blastocyst from
which the stem cells are taken is a ‘fully human person’. They conclude
that its only unique characteristic is the recombinant DNA from both
parents that it contains. They point out that this DNA will survive through
the creation of cell lines using the pluripotent stem cells derived from
the embryo. This DNA could later be used to make a ‘new nuclear-
transfer-derived embryo’ (that is, a ‘replacement’ embryo could be
created using the Dolly technique) that would have identical DNA to
the original embryo. In essence, they are arguing that the destruction
of the ‘original’ embryo to obtain stem cells is not necessarily the
destruction of the only unique feature of that embryo, which is its
DNA, and that this is an answer to those who oppose embryo stem
cell research on the grounds that it involves the destruction of human
embryos. In other words, they value the genetic uniqueness of the
embryo more than the embryo itself, and provided the former can
be preserved the latter may be destroyed. (This is a similar approach
to that mentioned in Chapter 2, of cloning an embryo from an
aborted fetus in order to have the ‘same’ baby at a later date.)
They point out that of the needs that merit sacriﬁce, reducing
widespread suffering from disease – the goal of human embryo
stem cell research – is an obvious and compelling one.
McGee and Caplan’s argument for the use of embryos is constructed
in such a way that it would not apply to more developed forms of
human life. Those forms that can experience pain or have memory
should not be sacriﬁced for the beneﬁt of others because features
such as memory – unlike the unique DNA – are not replaceable.
Their argument is an example of sophisticated science being
used as a solution to ethical problems raised by sophisticated
science. It is a situational ethics approach, but much subtler than
most of them and borders on asking whether using embryos as
the source of stem cells is inherently wrong. The focus of their
enquiry in this latter respect is not on whether it is inherently
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
60
wrong to intentionally destroy an early human life; rather, it is
on whether it is inherently wrong to destroy such a human life
if all the unique features of this life can be replicated at a later
time. This approach is a highly imaginative combination of
philosophy, semantics and avant-garde science. But in using it,
would we just be deﬁning away the real ethical issue – namely,
are we justiﬁed in intentionally destroying a human embryo, in
using it as an object to beneﬁt the rest of us?
There may be some answers to the ethical problems raised by
human therapeutic cloning on which there could be consensus.
With further scientiﬁc advances, we might not need to use an
embryo to obtain stem cells but could obtain them from the
person who needs a tissue or organ or from another person. It
might also eventually be possible to cause a somatic cell taken
from the person who needs a transplant to de-differentiate and
re-differentiate into the tissue or organ that is needed without the
creation of an embryo. The problem is that developing this science
will take time. Usually doing science in ‘ethics time’ means that we
need time to work out the ethics that should govern the science. But
here, somewhat ironically, we need time to work out the science in
order to avoid ethical problems.
We need thorough consideration of the competing interests that are
brought into play by human therapeutic cloning. These are, on the one
hand, that we cannot wait for further scientiﬁc advances, because those
who are suffering or dying and could be helped by human therapeutic
cloning and embryonic stem cell research need treatment now. On the
other hand, we will not be able to repair or reverse the harm that we
would do to our sense of respect for both human life and its transmission,
and of wonder about them, if we unethically use human embryos.
On a personal note, even though I believe that human cloning is morally
wrong, I am not sure, if my life or that of someone I loved depended on
using therapies developed as a result of human therapeutic cloning, that
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
61
I would make the decision I believe is the ethically correct one. We should
be very concerned that the cynics might prove to be correct, that no
matter what ethical conclusions we come to, human cloning will proceed,
especially if people believe that the good that might come from this new
science would far outweigh any of the risks or harms we currently perceive
it as presenting.
Human reproductive cloning
I want to turn now to human reproductive cloning – using cloning
technology with the goal of creating genetically identical people. Some
of the same ethical issues are raised in all cases of human cloning, whether
reproductive or therapeutic – for instance, the ethics of creating human
embryos through cloning and carrying out research on them. Indeed,
undertaking cloning is, in itself, research. But reproductive cloning
also raises different issues and, while some people would prohibit
both forms of cloning and others permit both, some people would
allow human therapeutic cloning but prohibit human reproductive
cloning – in particular, the use of the Dolly technique to clone a baby
from an adult human.
A strong argument against creating such clones is that they would
be deprived of their unique genetic identity, in a way that is not
true even of naturally occurring genetically identical siblings, and
to do this is to wrong them. The philosopher Hans Jonas argues
that respect for the human person requires respect for human
genetic diversity, and this is why human reproductive cloning is
inherently wrong. On the basis of Jonas’s work, and quoting the
philosopher, Annas constructs a powerful argument
that cloning is always a crime against the clone, the crime of depriving
the clone of his or her ‘existential right to certain subjective terms
of being’ – particularly, the ‘right of ignorance’ of facts about his
or her origin that are likely to be ‘paralyzing for the spontaneity
of becoming himself’ or herself. This advance knowledge of what
another has or has not accomplished with the clone’s genome
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
62
destroys the clone’s ‘condition for authentic growth’ in seeking to
answer the fundamental question of all beings, ‘Who am I?’
Jonas says if we are to act ethically we must never ‘violate the
right to that ignorance which is a condition of authentic action.
... The ethical command [is] ... to respect the right of each human
life to ﬁnd its own way and be a surprise to itself.’ Annas concludes
in a similar vein that ‘through human cloning we will lose
something vital to our humanity, the uniqueness and, therefore,
the value and dignity of every human. Cloning represents the
height of genetic reductionism and genetic determinism.’
One of the paradoxes in the debate on human reproductive cloning
arises in relation to whether genetic difference matters. In Chapter
2, I discussed the gene-machine view of the human person. Those
who adopt this view, particularly the scientists, are relying on a
‘Genes-R-Us’ concept – or, as sociologists Dorothy Nelkin and Susan
Lindee describe it, a view that DNA has become the human soul,
that is, a DNA mystique. And yet, at the same time, in order to justify
human reproductive cloning, these same people argue that creating
a child without a unique genetic identity should not be viewed as a
problem. They often point out that genes are only partly responsible
for who we are. For example, some scientists who do not want to be
prohibited from undertaking human reproductive cloning have been
identifying and emphasizing the differences between each of the
members of two sets of naturally conceived identical quadruplets who
live in the United States. Alternatively, or in addition, they argue that
in human cloning carried out through somatic cell nuclear transfer (the
‘Dolly technique’), the small genetic difference between the person from
whom the cell was taken and the clone – as explained above, the clone
has mitochondrial DNA different from that of the cell donor – is sufﬁcient
to constitute genetic difference to the extent that this should matter. But
let’s face it, most people who want to have a child cloned from their DNA
choose to do so because they want a genetically related child – and some
speciﬁcally want a genetically identical child. These people are proposing
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
63
that genes both matter and do not matter, and the position they take in any
given circumstances depends on the argument that needs to be won.
An argument against human reproductive cloning – one related to that
based on a loss of genetic diversity – is that each person has a right to a
unique genetic identity. Indeed, it has been proposed by Annas that ‘the
central problem of cloning [is] the devaluing of persons by depriving them
of their uniqueness’. Again, an argument to the contrary is that we already
have naturally occurring identical twins, triplets or even quadruplets, and
we do not regard their lives as of less value or less worthy of respect
because they are not genetically unique. Why then is this a problem
with human cloning? With the advent of cloning technology, these
naturally occurring siblings are sometimes referred to as natural clones.
Therefore, the argument goes, we are just using technology to do what
can occur naturally. However, there are important ethically relevant
differences between situations of naturally occurring and artiﬁcially
created genetically identical people. These include that a different
moral order (different ethical concerns and obligations) is involved
when we intentionally create such a situation: When we intervene
on others, we have moral responsibilities that we do not have if
the same situation occurs naturally. Naturally occurring identical
sibs are also of the same age and, therefore, their life is, as Jonas
says, ‘a surprise to each of them’. And moreover, even if human
reproductive cloning’s contravention of genetic uniqueness was
not a major ethical concern, it is not the only reason that such
cloning is wrong.
The further question this discussion raises is whether embryo
splitting with the intention of producing identical siblings to
be born contemporaneously is also wrong. In my view, it is.
Although this situation could occur naturally, the intervention
of a human actor who intends to and does cause this result
makes it ethically unacceptable. It is human cloning in a sense
in which naturally occurring genetically identical human sibs is
not: It is cloning of a human by a human.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
64
We can also argue that human reproductive cloning is
inherently wrong because as a general rule each of us
has a right to be begotten by chance as far as our genetic
inheritance is concerned, not by human choice. This objection
would encompass an argument that we have a right not to have
another person design us in his or her image, which is precisely
what human reproductive cloning involves; it is ‘playing God’
in the most fundamental sense (in the sense that, as the Bible
states, God created man [sic] in His image, and we are producing
clones in our image) and in a way that other interferences with or
manipulation of human reproduction are not. We have a right to
come into existence through human reproduction, not, as is the
case with human cloning, through replication. One variation on the
argument that undertaking human cloning is ‘playing God’ I found
very surprising. This approach, suggested to me by a geneticist who
favours human cloning, is that deeply religious people believe that
God intended them to be His co-creators. Therefore, they can also
believe, he said, that God intended people to discover the science of
genetic manipulation, including cloning, and to use it to take over
more of His creative work.
There must be reverence for the creative forces of nature in the passing
on of human life and we need to enquire what limits this requirement
would place on us in using our genetic science. Human reproductive
cloning – and human therapeutic cloning – contravene the most
fundamental requirements of reverence in the passing on of human life.
Concepts such as dignity are relevant in assessing whether human
reproductive cloning contravenes requirements of respect for human
beings and human life and, therefore, is inherently wrong. But whether
humans are seen to have intrinsic dignity (dignity simply because they are
human) or extrinsic dignity (dignity attributed to them by other people)
will inﬂuence how we would view human reproductive cloning. A concept
of intrinsic dignity is more likely to result in a conclusion that human
reproductive cloning is inherently wrong than is one of extrinsic dignity.
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
65
A concept of extrinsic dignity makes it easier to argue that whether human
reproductive cloning is an affront to respect for human dignity simply
depends on how we view the cloning process and whether we attribute
dignity to the resulting clone. A concept of intrinsic dignity is much less
open and ﬂexible in this respect. To explore what respect for intrinsic
human dignity would require in the context of human cloning, we can
rephrase Ricœur’s principle: What do we owe to the human beings who
would result from cloning – in particular, what does respect for their
human dignity require that we not do to them – simply because they
are human? Since all humans must be seen as subjects, not objects,
we must avoid using technologies in any way that detracts from their
being treated or seen as a subject. The obligations we owe to human
beings include not to manufacture them; not to make them into
objects, things or commodities; and to respect their right not to be
designed by another human. Rather, we must allow each person his
or her individual and unique ticket in the great genetic lottery of the
passing on of human life. Human reproductive cloning contravenes
all of these requirements.
This view – that we have a right to come into existence through genetic
chance, not genetic choice on the part of another human – raises
the question whether we would ever be justiﬁed in intervening on
a human embryo to correct a serious genetic disease. In my view,
there is no ethical reason to refrain from undertaking necessary
therapy intended for the beneﬁt of that embryo, provided the
potential beneﬁts outweigh the risks and the parents provide
informed consent. The question becomes much more difﬁcult
if what we are doing involves altering the human germ cell line,
those genes that are passed on through ova and sperm from
generation to generation. If a disease is caused by a defective
gene and we correct that gene in the germ cell line of an embryo,
all subsequent progeny of that embryo would be free of that
disease. But some people think that we should never alter the
human germ cell line. This would mean that in order to avoid
an embryo inheriting a disease caused by a defective gene, we
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
66
would need to intervene on each embryo individually. While
there is grave danger in allowing any intervention to alter the
human germ cell line, the one situation in which this might be
justiﬁed would be to cure a very serious, genetically inherited
disease. We would need to take great care that our deﬁnition
of such diseases was very narrowly construed, however, and did
not open up a precedent for such interventions other than for
this very limited purpose.
One danger of allowing alteration of the human germ cell
line is that scientists will engage in genetic enhancement or
disenhancement of embryos. Characteristics that might be subject
to this interference include physical ones of height, eye and hair
colour, or build. Lee Silver, in his book Remaking Eden: How genetic
engineering and cloning will transform the American family, speaks of
using the new genetic technologies to make two strains of humans –
the ‘gene rich’ (genetically enhanced humans, especially with respect
to intelligence) and the ‘gene poor’ (the genetically unenhanced –
could we say natural?). He predicts that the gene rich will only want
to reproduce with other gene rich persons and, consequently, the
inequality will be perpetuated and extended. Many commentators
believe that parents who are already willing to sacriﬁce a great deal
in order to provide opportunities for their children – private schools,
sports coaching or music lessons – would want to have their children’s
intelligence, sporting or musical ability genetically enhanced and would
be willing to pay for this. They propose that in the long run it would
probably be much less expensive than the methods used today. Should
we prohibit such interventions? If we allow human cloning, would such
interventions become more likely, or easier to carry out, or set a precedent
that they are acceptable?
Perhaps the most surprising among the galaxy of astonishing feats that
might be accomplished with the new genetic technologies is the possibility
that we will be able to create a ‘disease-proofed child’. In the same vein, Ben
Bova, a science ﬁction writer, has recently speculated that the ﬁrst person
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
67
to achieve immortality may already have been born, in that this person’s
genes will be able to be reprogrammed not to age or die. Should parents be
allowed to have their children genetically modiﬁed in such ways?
The power to enhance intelligence can also be used to disenhance it.
This possibility is most often discussed in the context of the need for a
labour force for low-level, boring, repetitive jobs that those of natural
or enhanced intelligence would not agree to perform. To undertake
genetic disenhancement – to deliberately reduce intelligence or other
characteristics of a person – would be a contemporary example of pure
evil.
There are reasons other than the risks involved for refraining from
altering the human germ cell line. A requirement of profound respect
for the human germ cell line also ﬂows from at least three other facts:
First, single genes can have multiple functions (the phenomenon
called pleiotrophy) so we cannot know in advance the full possible
impact of changing a single gene. Second, the human germ cell line
is the common heritage of humankind handed to us by our ancestors
and that we hold in trust for future generations. And, third, in the
past major changes in the human germ cell line have occurred
over vast time spans. We can now achieve comparable changes in
nanoseconds; ‘science time’ is much faster than’ethics time’. At the
least, we need to take ‘ethics time’ to decide what we must not do
and may do. It is only now that it is possible to interfere with the
essence of human life itself that we are faced with the question of
what respect for our very nature requires that we must not do.
Although human reproductive cloning is not human reproduction,
but human replication, it is often referred to as one of the new
reproductive technologies. But is there a difference in kind
between human reproductive cloning and the use of other new
reproductive technologies or simply a difference in degree? We
were at ﬁrst horriﬁed by the new reproductive technologies
now widely used, but we relatively quickly came to a ‘Let’s
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
68
do it’ stage. Will the same happen with human reproductive
cloning? What is so striking is, as health law professor Laurie
Andrews points out, that ‘the time frame from horriﬁed
negation to “let’s do it” is so much shorter’.
We cannot properly evaluate the impact of new reproductive
technologies by looking at each in isolation. Rather, we must
consider the effect of connecting them and the effect they
will have on the social and cultural context in which they will
be placed, and vice versa. We can gain insight about what the
future might hold in this regard with respect to new reproductive
technologies, including human reproductive cloning, when we are
able to fully integrate them, by looking at the development of the
Internet.
The technologies that now make up the Internet had each been
around for half a century – fax machines since the 1930s, modems
and radio phones since the 1940s – before the Internet became a
(virtual) reality. An article in The [Montreal] Gazette describes it this
way:
The revolution came ... when we ﬁnally ﬁgured out how to connect them:
how to make one fax machine connect with telephone lines and negotiate
with another fax machine; how to let one modem talk to another on the
telephone and agree between themselves how to work; how to take the big,
crackling radio phones of old and connect them to networks that let you call
someone who carries a phone tiny enough for his pocket. The trend for the
future? Look around. ‘The technologies are already here’, [U.S. Nobel Prize
laureate Arno] Penzias claims. ‘They just haven’t been connected yet.’
So it was only when the communication and information technologies
were combined that they had a massive impact on our world, including its
culture and values. The same is likely to be true for the new reproductive
technologies. What would happen, for instance, were we to combine the
technology for genetic enhancement of intelligence with that which makes
possible a half-human half-chimpanzee, with – what, somewhat surprisingly,
is the one missing link – the artiﬁcial uterus, which would make ectogenesis
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
69
(gestation of a child entirely outside a woman’s uterus) possible? While
most of us, it is to be hoped, could not imagine that we would ever accept
human-animal hybrids as an ethical use of genetic technology, it is even
more improbable that we would accept that women should carry them. It
is, however, less improbable to imagine someone setting up an ectogenesis
‘manufacturing plant’ of such beings – unless, of course, we are prepared
to say that some interventions that the new genetic technologies make
possible are inherently wrong and must never be undertaken.
The least threatening use of human reproductive cloning is to use it to
create a family. But, as Annas has pointed out, while many people ‘love
babies and technologies and most ... applaud the ability of the new
assisted reproduction techniques to help infertile couples have children
... a bad way to protect the children who have been conceived and
born with the assistance of the new reproductive techniques is simply
to provide the adults involved with what they want.’ We have shifted
the emphasis in adoption practices from the rights of the biological
parents to the welfare of the children and we must do the same in
relation to the use of new reproductive technologies. Children must
be moved to the centre of consideration in decision-making about
the use of reproductive technologies, and nowhere more so than
with respect to reproductive cloning. Some people who would allow
human reproductive cloning believe, however, that it is wrong to
argue that this type of cloning should be prohibited out of concern
for the resulting child. Such an argument, they say, amounts to
asserting the right of nothing to remain nothing.
Philosopher and ethicist Thomas Murray, in his sensitive and
humane book The Worth of a Child, alerts us to the dangers
that unbridled concepts of procreative liberty unmitigated by
concerns for values can create: ‘In the name of procreative
liberty, an astonishing variety of arrangements for making and
obtaining children have been defended. They are all in the
service of making a family and so we should welcome them, say
their defenders.’ Such arrangements include what University
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
70
of Texas law professor John Robertson refers to as collaborative
reproduction, which is often commercial collaborative
reproduction – the sale of gametes and of embryos, and paid
surrogate motherhood. As Murray points out, the champions
of procreative liberty celebrate control and choice on the part
of the parents, but with little concern for what this means with
regard to harm to the children and to the values at the heart of
family life:
Good families are characterized more by acceptance than control.
Furthermore, families are the pre-eminent realm of unchosen obligations.
... We may choose to have a child but – unless we are ‘adopting’ one of
Robertson’s cloned embryos – we do not choose to have this particular
child with its interests, moods and manners.
It is not possible to explore here all the risks of human reproductive
cloning to the cloned child or to important values that govern
how we humans bond to each other in our ﬁrst and predominant
intimate relationship, that of the family. Some people who focus on
risks to the cloned child as the main reason for prohibiting cloning
argue that we would need so much human embryo experimentation,
with the risks of injured or handicapped children being born as a
result, that human cloning is not justiﬁed. And sometimes they add to
this that the very large waste of human embryos that cloning would
involve means it is not justiﬁed. This objection to cloning raises the
issue of whether the major reason for prohibiting reproductive cloning
is that it involves human embryo research. I propose that even if such
research were not involved, human reproductive cloning is not ethically
acceptable.
As well as physical risks to the child, there are also risks of psychological
harm from a diminished sense of individuality and personal autonomy.
Many teenagers have problems with individuation – separating themselves
from their parents and seeing themselves as independent persons. Imagine
the difﬁculty in this respect for a clone who has no genetic distance from
the parent and, in all probability, looks physically like a carbon copy of his
or her ‘parent’. Imagine bringing up a child that was a clone of yourself and
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
71
correcting the mistakes you thought had been made by your parents or by
you yourself. Consider the unrealistic expectations parents would place on
the child. Then we can turn to the impact on the family of reproductive
cloning. And consider the possibility that we would see a new form of
genetic discrimination, between humans regarded as desirable enough to
be cloned and the great unclonable masses, or possibly in the opposite
direction, between the masses of the cloned and the genetically unique
non-cloned people. One of the central problems of cloning, ‘the
devaluing of persons by depriving them of their uniqueness’, has harmful
consequences well beyond the devaluation itself.
The strongest case for human reproductive cloning is when it is done
for compassionate reasons – for instance, to create matching organs or
tissues to save the life of a dying child or to ‘replace’ that child. Annas,
however, challenges our uncritical acceptance of this justiﬁcation of
cloning. He argues as follows:
Using the bodies of children to replicate them encourages all of us to
devalue children and treat them as interchangeable commodities. ... The
death of a child need no longer be a singular human tragedy, but, rather, an
opportunity to replicate the no longer priceless or irreplaceable dead child.
No one should have such dominion over a child, even a dead or dying
child, as to use his or her genes to create the child’s child.
Parents who would clone their children are depriving these children
of reproductive choice. They are treating their children as entities
that can be split and replicated at their whim. Annas believes this
is a stronger argument against cloning children than its biological
novelty. It is hypocritical, he says, to argue that cloning expands
the liberty and choices of would-be cloners, when it reduces the
liberty and choices of the resulting child.
We can also look to the law that currently regulates intra-familial
relationships, to see if it might provide insights on the ethics
of human reproductive cloning. For instance, reproduction
with blood relatives is prohibited by incest law, certainly for
one reason and possibly for two. The certain reason is to avoid
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
72
dysgenesis, the genetic dangers for children born as a result
of close relatives reproducing with each other. It is less certain
that the prohibition of incest reﬂects a concern to maintain
important family bonds and relationships that incest would
threaten. Dysgenesis is not a problem in reproductive cloning,
because it is genetic replication, not reproduction. Moreover,
the crime of incest requires sexual intercourse, which is precisely
what cloning excludes from reproduction. It is not as clear that
the criminal law on incest reﬂects concern with protecting family
bonds and relationships. But to the extent that it does, the use of
this law – our most weighty, societal-values-establishing mechanism
– to protect these relationships shows how important they are, not
just to individuals but also to society. Damage to family bonds is a
very relevant concern in relation to reproductive cloning.
In contrast to the law providing a message that human reproductive
cloning should be prohibited, others argue that the courts, for
instance, in the United States, have held that the state may not
force a restrictive paradigm of the ‘family’ on people, and that
constitutionally protected reproductive rights should include the right
to found a family through cloning. A ‘Note’ in the Harvard Law Review
articulates this view:
Cloning should receive constitutional protection because it represents a
conscious choice to bring a child into the world and to accept the social role
of parenthood, thereby implicating the sort of deeply personal, family-related
choices that trigger substantive due process protection. ... Despite its novelty,
cloning would at least ensure a genetic bond between the parent and child, an
important component of the social status of parenthood.
It remains to be seen whether the courts’ views of what constitutes a
family that will be given constitutional protection extends to rights to
create one through cloning.
We have no idea how the radical reproductive and genetic departure
that reproductive cloning represents would affect bonds and behaviour
within the family, and its sense of itself, its past and its future. We often
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

A
.

S
o
m
e
r
v
i
l
l
e
The Ethics of
Immortalizing
Our Genetic
Selves
73
differentiate bonds between intimates and bonds between strangers. A
clone’s relationship to his or her ‘parent’ and family is so far outside natural
human experience, in a sense so intimate, that it is beyond even our human
experience with bonds between strangers.
Although laboratory assistance in reproduction can be ethically justiﬁed
in certain circumstances, I propose that its use should be regarded as an
exception to the rule that natural reproduction is preferable. Those who
wish to use a new technology such as reproductive cloning should have
the burden of proving that to employ it is not inherently wrong, and,
if it is not, that the beneﬁts promised far outweigh the risks, and that
the risks can be justiﬁed. (This approach requires, in particular, that we
place the child at the centre of the decision-making.) Consequently, if
we were to decide that human reproductive cloning is not inherently
wrong, we must adopt a precautionary ethical principle, similar to
that used in international environmental law. This would mean, as
Annas explains, that the ‘proponents of human cloning would have
the burden of proving that there was some compelling contravailing
need to beneﬁt either current or future generations before such
an experiment was permitted (for example, if the entire species
were to become sterile)’. It merits noting that such a justiﬁcation
looks to the common good, not just the wishes of individuals. Our
approach to human cloning – whether reproductive or therapeutic
– must reﬂect societal values, not just the values of individuals or
those of scientists and researchers. This raises the need for public
consultation. And in order to engage ethically in that, we should
recognize the difﬁculties inherent in undertaking it and ensure
that it occurs in substance, not just appearance.
Sufﬁce it to say that the issues and problems of human
reproductive cloning with respect to the child and the family
become even more complex and difﬁcult, and raise additional
matters of profound concern, when commercialization is
involved – as would be inevitable were human reproductive
cloning to be allowed.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
74
Nature never contemplated needing safeguards against science
such as human cloning. It was believed that there was a natural
barrier to cloning an adult mammal, that genetic material in a
somatic cell was irreversibly modiﬁed in such a way that you could
not obtain a clone from it. Ian Wilmut, a research scientist, and his
colleagues at the Rosslyn Institute in Glasgow showed, in creating
Dolly, that this was not true. What does this new power require of
us in fulﬁlling our human responsibility to hold nature ‘in trust’, in
particular for future generations, but especially that part of nature
that constitutes the fundamental nature of us? Perhaps the most
profound question that has been asked is: If we were to undertake
human cloning, what kind of creatures might we become?
Our anxiety about placing inhibitions on science may arise, in part,
from the fact that we think the only way we can truly fulﬁl ourselves
is through unlimited scientiﬁc progress. But the opposite might be
true: We may need to refrain from certain actions such as human
cloning in order to fully realize our humanness and humanity and to
protect our human spirit.
If we proceed with human therapeutic cloning or human reproductive
cloning, we will irreversibly change the moral or metaphysical reality
and, therefore, our sense of the human spirit, which is crucial to our
full human well-being. We need this reality to ﬁnd meaning in human
life and to surround human life, its essence and its transmission, with
profound respect. Our human spirit is the only means we have to pass
on this respect and meaning – our most important and oldest human
values – to future generations. Cloning would pass on our physical life,
but what would it do to the life of our human spirit?
We will not have the luxury of a trial run; any damage we cause to this
moral or metaphysical reality is almost certain to be irreversible. We must,
therefore, ask: Are we justiﬁed in causing the change in this reality that will
inevitably result from undertaking human therapeutic cloning or human
reproductive cloning? If not ever, at least, today or tomorrow?
M
a
r
g
a
r
e
t

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
78
adequate warning labels to alert those people who were
likely to be affected. Imagine that Vioxx was not just another
analgesic but, for example, a powerful antiretroviral or another
life-saving drug that was needed by, but unaffordable to,
people in developing countries. Even if the drug was safe only
for Indians and Han Chinese, that would constitute a market of
over 2 billion people. Merck could license Indian and Chinese
companies to manufacture such a drug for their own local
markets. Merck’s loss would be mitigated and pharmaceutical
companies and patients in the developing world would beneﬁt.
The completion of a good quality draft of the sequence of the
euchromatic portion of the human genome was accompanied
by a commentary in Nature in which the future of genomics was
compared to a house (Collins et al., 2003). The question we ask
here is: Who will live in that house? Is it only the 700 million or so
people in the United States and Western Europe, or will the rest of
the 6 billion people, who live mainly in the developing world, also be
able to ﬁnd room there?
In this article, we make two related arguments: ﬁrst, that pharmaco-
genetics has signiﬁcant relevance to the health of people in developing
countries; and second, that for this beneﬁt to be realized, we need
to take into account not just differences between the genotypes of
individuals, important as they are, but the differences in genotypes
between different population groups.
We begin by identifying examples of how emerging knowledge about
genetic and/or genomic variation is beginning to affect the pharmaceutical
industry, and how pharmacogenetic strategies can be used to increase
efﬁciency, cut costs, reduce adverse effects and increase the efﬁcacy of
drug-development pipelines. We document the trend towards using
population-group genotypes in drug development and regulation, and
discuss the implications of genetic differences that underlie variation in
drug responses and disease susceptibility between population groups. We
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

P
e
t
e
r

A
.

S
i
n
g
e
r
Pharmaco-
genetics and
Geographical
Ancestry:
Implications
for drug
development
and global
health
79
highlight emerging genotyping studies that are being undertaken in various
regions of the developing world and, if the vision materializes fully, the
possible role of haplotype mapping in simplifying and reducing the cost
of genotyping populations, potentially helping developing countries to
beneﬁt from knowledge of genetic diversity between populations. Finally,
we explore how developing countries speciﬁcally will beneﬁt from these
new trends. We argue that pharmaceutical companies in developing
countries will be able to harness pharmacogenetic principles and the
knowledge of local genotype patterns to stimulate their industries, cut
costs and generally improve the health of their populations.
Emerging industry trends
Pharmacogenetics itself is not a new discipline – it has been around for
about 50 years (Kalow, 2002) (Box 1). What is new is that advances
in genomics, particularly in methodology, have allowed us to merge
pharmacogenetics with pharmacogenomics, improving our ability
to identify the genetic causes of diseases and search for new drug
targets. Today, several major pharmaceutical companies have teams
that focus their research on the intersection between genetics,
genomics and drug development, and some are already beginning
to take genomic variation into account in their drug development
pipelines. Although the idea of focusing clinical trials on subgroups
of individuals is not new – stratiﬁcation by disease subtype has
always been a goal of medical research – the use of genetics in
this context is new (Tate and Goldstein, 2004).
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
80
Pharmacogenetics has so far had little impact on health-care in general,
or on the pharmaceutical industry in particular. This is partly because
pharmacogenetics has been thought of mainly as having boutique-style
‘personal’ applications that are unlikely to be relevant to the majority of
people, particularly those in developing countries. We believe that this is
about to change both with the adoption of pharmacogenetics per se, and
because genetic differences between population groups – in addition to
Box 1 | Drug response variation among
individuals and populations
During the past 50 years of pharmacogenetic research
(Meyer, 2004), we have learnt that variation between
individuals that is inﬂuenced by genes and other factors
is relevant to the efﬁcacy of all drugs. We now know that
metabolic enzymes are affected not only by SNPs (of which
the human genome contains more than 10 million), but
also by other genomic variation, such as gene duplications
and deletions, mutations in regulatory genes, and probably
by recently described large-scale copy number variations
(Iafrate et al., 2004; Sebat et al., 2004). Increasing numbers of
relevant polymorphisms are being discovered. Most relevant
to our discussion, we also know that the frequencies and
distributions of harmful and protective polymorphisms vary
greatly between human populations (Goldstein et al., 2003;
Schaeffeler et al., 2001; Wilson et al., 2001).
Given all of the above, it is valid to study traits that are
predominantly expressed in speciﬁc populations (Nebert and
Menon, 2001). Such studies might provide a molecular basis
for population differences in drug-metabolizing enzymes (for
example, cytochrome P450 (Xie et al., 2001; Meyer and Zanger,
1997), sulfotransferases (Weinshilboum and Otterness, 1994;
Falany, 1997) and methyltransferases [Weinshilboum, 2003]),
transporters (such as ABC1 [Schaeffeler et al., 2001; Ameyaw
et al., 2001]), receptors (such as adrenergic receptors [Tate and
Goldstein, 2004; Xie et al., 2001]) and other factors that are involved
in differential drug responses and disease susceptibility. Many of
the population-group differences that are documented are likely to
have important medical and public-health implications (Taylor et al.,
2004; Yancy et al., 2001; Exner et al., 2001).
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

P
e
t
e
r

A
.

S
i
n
g
e
r
Pharmaco-
genetics and
Geographical
Ancestry:
Implications
for drug
development
and global
health
81
differences between individuals – will be taken into account. The stimulus
for the adoption of these complementary emerging trends in the developed
world, and particularly in the United States, will come from regulatory
changes, litigation, and patient demand based on accumulating scientiﬁc
evidence of the validity of the pharmacogenetics approach (see the BiDil
example below). In addition, there will always be market-based incentives
if entrepreneurs identify an opportunity (Bloche, 2004).
The role of regulation in driving pharmacogenetics is best demonstrated
by the recent actions of the United States Food and Drug Administration
(FDA). The FDA has become a proactive advocate of pharmacogenetics
and pharmacogenomics (Lesko and Woodcock, 2004). A few years
ago it approved alosetron hydrochloride (Lotronex, GlaxoSmithKline)
for irritable bowel syndrome, but the drug was quickly withdrawn
voluntarily by GlaxoSmithKline because of adverse reactions. However,
because of its efﬁcacy, patients and physicians fought for Lotronex’s
return, and it was re-approved by the FDA in 2002 under restricted
market terms. Now GlaxoSmithKline is studying the relationship
between adverse events and genetic proﬁles as part of FDA-imposed
post-marketing commitments (Webster et al., 2004).
In January 2003, the FDA called for greater scrutiny of data from
subpopulations, asking drug testers to use the racial categories that
have been speciﬁed by the Census Bureau, to ensure consistency
when evaluating potential differences in responses to drugs
(Food and Drug Administration, 2003). This is illustrated by a
compelling example: a few years ago, the FDA rejected a ﬁxed-
dose combination of isosorbide dinitrate and hydralazine (now
known as BiDil, NitroMed) because its efﬁcacy in treating heart
failure could not be demonstrated statistically in a clinical trial
in the general population (Kahn, 2004). When it was tested
exclusively in 1,050 self-identiﬁed African-American patients
who had experienced heart failure (Franciosa et al., 2002), the
results of this double-blind, randomized clinical trial were so
impressive that in July 2004 the trial (which was endorsed by
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
82
the Association of Black Cardiologists) had to be stopped for
ethical reasons; there was a signiﬁcantly higher mortality rate in
the placebo group than in the group given BiDil (Taylor et al.,
2004). BiDil is now expected to be approved by the FDA in early
2005, as the ﬁrst ever ‘race-speciﬁc’ therapy (Henig, 2004).
The role that litigation might play in driving the adoption of
pharmacogenetics is illustrated by the Cassidy versus SmithKline
Beecham case. This Pennsylvania class action suit alleged that
SmithKline Beecham failed to warn doctors and the public that
its vaccine against Lyme disease could trigger immune arthritis
– an untreatable degenerative disease – in people who carry the
HLA DR4+ marker, nearly a third of the United States population.
Although both pre-marketing and post-marketing analyses by
federal agencies have failed to conﬁrm any increased risk from the
vaccine, it was removed from the market in February 2002 as a result
of plummeting sales that probably resulted from the controversy that
surrounded the lawsuits (Marchant, 2003).
A number of pharmaceutical, biotechnology and genomics companies
are now turning to pharmacogenetics in their ‘personalized’ medicine
programmes, which are most relevant for the wealthy in the developed
world. Some companies are prospectively collecting and analyzing
samples from clinical trials to identify predictive SNPs. However, they are
having difﬁculty in obtaining phenotypic data (for example, that relates
to adverse effects) to link to information from DNA samples, and some
companies are now working with the FDA to develop appropriate data-
mining tools for clinical trial data. In the long term, it is perhaps more
relevant to people in developing countries that pharmaceutical companies
are on the lookout for genetic subgroups that could identify new targets
for therapeutic drugs. Pﬁzer, for example, is particularly interested in
hypertension-related genes in African Americans, and in diabetes-related
genes that could account for the high rates of the disease in both Asian
Indians and Native Americans. AstraZeneca is also looking for population
differences in drug response in its clinical trials. If a drug were found to have
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

P
e
t
e
r

A
.

S
i
n
g
e
r
Pharmaco-
genetics and
Geographical
Ancestry:
Implications
for drug
development
and global
health
83
a ‘profound effect’ on a particular subpopulation, AstraZeneca would label
and promote it accordingly; and ‘if a population doesn’t beneﬁt, that could
end up on the label too’ (Holden, 2003).
Ancestry and phenotypic dif ferences
Studies in population genetics have revealed a great deal of genetic
variation within racial or ethnic subpopulations, but also substantial
variation between the ﬁve main racial groups, which are based on
continental ancestry. This variation has been demonstrated in three
ways (Risch et al., 2002): ﬁrst, ancestral tree diagrams carried out
using population genetic data from indigenous groups consistently
show that Homo sapiens has major branches that correspond to the
ﬁve main groups. Second, clusters that have recently been inferred
from multi-locus genetic data and other studies coincide closely with
groups that are deﬁned by self-identiﬁed race or continental ancestry
(Mountain and Risch, 2004; Rosenberg et al., 2002). Third, low-
frequency alleles are more likely to be race speciﬁc. Race-speciﬁc
variants are particularly common among Africans, who have greater
genetic variability than other racial groups but more low-frequency
alleles (Risch et al., 2002). For observed phenotypic differences,
self-identiﬁed race and continental ancestry often have relatively
high predictive power compared to self-identiﬁed ethnicity. It is
therefore likely that racial or ethnic categories will continue to be
useful as long as such categorization ‘explains’ variation that is left
unexplained by other factors (Mountain and Risch, 2004).
We must, however, be cautious as to how the results of such
studies are interpreted and used (Foster and Sharp, 2004). We
need a detailed understanding of each of the racial groups
that are chosen for study, because the races that comprise the
human species are far more heterogeneous than was previously
thought. For example, individuals living in sub-Saharan rural
Africa have close to 100% of what are called African alleles,
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
84
whereas African Americans living in the United States show
about 26% Caucasian admixture (Lonjou and Morton, 1999).
Some groups (for example, African-American, Caribbean and
Panamanian populations) are likely to show a large degree of
allelic diversity, whereas other groups (for example, sub-Saharan
Africans, Inuits and Finns) are less genetically diverse. Old
Amish individuals share more alleles than do individuals in other
populations because they marry within their own community and
as a result have a higher-than-average incidence of inborn errors of
metabolism (Andreasen, 1983), as do some Arab consanguineous
communities. Because of founder effects and enforced segregation,
Ashkenazi Jews also share a large number of alleles.
A recent meta-analysis by Ioannidis et al. (2004) showed that
genetic variants that are associated with disease predisposition
might often have similar effects across racial groups. However, in
an accompanying commentary, Goldstein and Hirschhorn (2004)
point out that meta-analytic studies of this type are plagued by
methodological concerns, and that the results presented by Ioannidis
et al. do not mean that people from different parts of the world will,
on average, have the same genetic predispositions to disease and will
respond to medicines in the same way. It is well-known that allele
frequencies of functional variants often differ substantially among
groups that have different geographic ancestries. For example, of 38
polymorphisms that have been associated in at least two studies with a
given drug response (Goldstein et al., 2003), two-thirds have signiﬁcant
allele-frequency differences between African Americans and Europeans,
and many of the differences are substantial (see also Box 1).
Genotyping in developing countries
Although it is true that many developing countries are beset by poverty,
a lack of clean water, diseases that are difﬁcult to control, illiteracy and
poor governance, it can be argued that they are the ones most in need of
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

P
e
t
e
r

A
.

S
i
n
g
e
r
Pharmaco-
genetics and
Geographical
Ancestry:
Implications
for drug
development
and global
health
85
emerging scientiﬁc and technological knowledge that might ameliorate their
situations, by reducing costs and the adverse effects of drugs. At present,
drugs that are tested on general populations in Europe and North America,
and that are sometimes licensed on the basis of efﬁcacy in only 30% of
the subjects, are sold in developing countries without any idea of how
effective or safe they are, and certainly without any regard for the local
frequencies of genomic markers.
Therefore, it is not surprising that several developing countries are starting
their own genotyping projects. For example, India and Thailand are both
embarking on SNP-genotyping studies. Hosted by the Genome Institute
of Singapore, an important regional initiative has recently brought
scientists from China, India, Indonesia, Japan, Korea, Malaysia, Nepal,
the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Taiwan to establish the Human
Genome Organization (HUGO) Paciﬁc Pan-Asian SNP Initiative, which
is expected to begin in the middle of 2005. The goal of this initiative is
to uncover the breadth of genetic diversity and the extent of genetic
similarity within Asian populations. This information will form the basis
for future studies in genomic medicine focused on Asian populations.
Data from the Pan-Asian study will provide a platform for researchers
in Asia to study why some populations seem predisposed to certain
diseases, or do not respond to certain drugs. Cost reductions and
new technologies are opening up the study to all researchers,
including those with less well-developed research infrastructures.
Asia is not alone in such initiatives. Mexico has a newly-created,
well-funded, federally mandated Institute of Genomic Medicine,
headed by Gerardo Jimenez-Sanchez (2003). Genotyping the
diverse Mexican populations is one of its top priorities.
Haplotype mapping
The relatively recent discovery of the haplotype structure
of the human genome, and the effect that this has on SNP
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
86
inheritance, could help to simplify and reduce the cost of
genotyping. When the International HapMap project is
completed, it might be possible to use just 300,000–600,000
tag SNPs to deﬁne the most signiﬁcant genetic variation.
Genotyping just a handful of these carefully chosen SNPs in a
chromosomal region may be enough to predict the remainder
of the nearby common SNPs (The International HapMap
Consortium, 2003).
The HapMap itself does not deﬁne the genetic diversity of
subgroups, but provides a useful framework to facilitate this. It
will provide a resource, but not all of the answers. A cutting-
edge example of the use of haplotype mapping to understand
an association between complex disease and genetics is the
work of the International Multiple Sclerosis Genetic Consortium
(IMSGC). This example is relevant to our discussion of the value of
genotyping for understanding diseases of subpopulations that have
geographical ancestry in developing countries. Recognizing that
multiple sclerosis (MS) is a complex genetic disorder, the IMSGC
is setting out to deﬁne the most signiﬁcant genetic variation that
is associated with MS. By making use of the economic advantages
that are provided by the emerging HapMap, as well as the falling
costs of genotyping, the IMSGC expects to be able to cover the entire
genome at high resolution (Sawcer et al., 2004). The consortium
is also taking advantage of the observation that some groups are
more prone to MS than others. It has long been known that African
Americans have half the risk of developing classical MS compared with
European Caucasians, and that sub-Saharan Africans rarely suffer from
this condition. Providing that environmental inﬂuence is discounted,
this indicates that it is the genetic contribution of Caucasians in African
Americans that is responsible for the higher risk of MS in African Americans
than in sub-Saharan Africans. By studying African Americans that have
MS and identifying the genetic components that they have inherited
from their European ancestors, the IMSGC hopes to identify regions of
the genome that carry MS-susceptibility genes.
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

P
e
t
e
r

A
.

S
i
n
g
e
r
Pharmaco-
genetics and
Geographical
Ancestry:
Implications
for drug
development
and global
health
87
Through its value in drug development and its identiﬁcation of populations
that will respond favourably to a particular drug, pharmacogenetics will
probably have an impact on global health, especially on neglected infectious
diseases such as malaria, tuberculosis and HIV/AIDS (Pang, 2003). In the
section below, we focus on speciﬁc ways in which drug development in,
and for, developing countries will beneﬁt from the recent trends discussed
above.
Opportunities for developing countries
Only 16 of the 1,393 new drugs that were marketed between 1975 and
1999 were registered for diseases that predominantly affect people in
developing countries, and three of those were for tuberculosis, which
is not restricted to developing countries (Trouiller et al., 2002). In the
future, pharmaceutical companies in the developed world will have
to pay more attention to developing countries. There are at least two
trends that will drive this change.
First, there is the need to gain deeper insight into the genetic
basis for variable drug responses. As demand for drugs that are
tailored to speciﬁc genotypes increases, pharmaceutical companies
will increasingly depend on selling their products to segmented
markets. Therefore, a deeper knowledge and cultivation of a wider
and more extensive market outside North America and Europe
will eventually be very important to them. If done correctly,
this will in turn beneﬁt people in developing countries. For
pharmaceutical companies worldwide, developing countries
are not only potentially huge markets for drug therapeutics
but are also depositories of important human genetic diversity.
Understanding this diversity is valuable because it better deﬁnes
those population subgroups that will beneﬁt more from a
particular drug than others, and allows the detection of side-
effects that might not be seen in populations that are mainly
Caucasian. It can also help to ascertain disease predisposition.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
88
It will therefore be increasingly important to include non-
Caucasian populations in clinical trials. The interest by Pﬁzer
and AstraZeneca in the genetics of African-American and
Asian-Indian subgroups living in the United States to help to
identify drug targets will probably not be adequate to satisfy
the need for harnessing global genetic diversity. Genotyping
studies of various populations from around the world will
therefore become valuable.
Second, pharmaceutical companies in developing countries are
themselves poised to make signiﬁcant gains on the global market
(Joshi, 2003). Big pharmaceutical companies can choose to view
them as rivals to be thwarted or, alternatively, as companies with
which to form mutually beneﬁcial partnerships. For pharmaceutical
companies in developing countries, pharmacogenetics might present
an opportunity, especially if they learn to harness our increasing
knowledge of the link between population genomic variation and
health. It is true that internal economics limit the ability of many
developing countries to capitalize on their genetic conﬁgurations.
However, it could well be argued that, with annual per capita health-
care expenditures as low as US$ 10–15, developing countries are
the ones that have the greatest need for more cost-effective health-
care strategies. This will enable these countries to not waste drugs on
people who will not respond or who will be harmed, and to understand
the genetic basis of disease predisposition, particularly of those diseases
such as HIV/AIDS, which disproportionately affect people in developing
countries and impose enormous burdens on their societies.
Although medical exploration in developing countries can expand the
genetic diversity of subjects who take part in clinical trials that lead to
drug development, pharmaceutical companies that attempt to harness
this valuable genomic resource will not succeed unless they work closely
with the authorities in developing countries, they act ethically, they are
willing to share beneﬁts, and they form partnerships with local researchers
and pharmaceutical companies. Developing countries will not cooperate
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

P
e
t
e
r

A
.

S
i
n
g
e
r
Pharmaco-
genetics and
Geographical
Ancestry:
Implications
for drug
development
and global
health
89
if they feel that the beneﬁts will go to others and that they are being used
merely as instruments for that end. Clearly, the populations studied will also
need to consent.
Drug resuscitation
In a recent review, Allen Roses described the potential useful applications
of prospective efﬁcacy and risk pharmacogenetics for drug development
pipelines (Roses, 2004). He observed that new drugs that are withdrawn
for safety reasons (and, by extension, for their lack of efﬁcacy) in Phase
IIA clinical trials by commercially driven pharmaceutical companies will
probably not be used for other segments of the population because they
would no longer be protected by patents. This might be the case for big
pharmaceutical companies in the developed world, but it does represent
an opportunity for pharmaceutical companies in developing countries
to license these compounds and develop them, both for their local
populations and for other people in the developing world who are either
not genetically predisposed to the adverse effects or for whom efﬁcacy
can be demonstrated to a greater extent. This idea of ‘resuscitation’ of
useful drugs for different populations is also, of course, applicable to
post-marketing drug withdrawals, as we proposed above for Vioxx.
Indeed, it may now be time for incentives to be developed for
just such drug resuscitations, perhaps in the form of public-private
partnerships. Examples of drugs that have not been developed
commercially in developed countries but that are useful in
developing countries include ivermectin, which has been given
as a gift by Merck to patients in the developing world who
are suffering from onchocerciasis (see online link The Story
of Mectizan). Another example is fosmidomycin, which is a
natural antibiotic that was originally developed in the 1970s for
bacterial infections but that was not commercially developed
by its Japanese owners, the Fujisawa Pharmaceutical Company.
In the late 1990s, a potential target for fosmidomycin was
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
90
identiﬁed in the partial genome sequence of the malaria
parasite (Jomaa et al., 1999). Tests on mouse malaria conﬁrmed
the high level of efﬁcacy of this drug, and fosmidomycin was
rapidly tested in humans in Gabon. It has since been developed
at very low cost, and is now part of the limited anti-malarial
armamentarium that is at our disposal (Borrmann et al., 2004).
A very relevant example that is based on pharmacogenetics and
geographical ancestry is BiDil. BiDil could have been discarded
because it did not have demonstrable efﬁcacy when tested on a
mixed population of United States patients. However, having been
tested speciﬁcally on African Americans, it has been resuscitated
for that population, and is obviously now of interest to Africans
who share their geographical ancestry with African Americans.
The increasing numbers of public-private partnerships that are
dedicated to ﬁnding treatments for major diseases of the poor, such
as the Medicines for Malaria Venture, may contribute to this trend,
as will the investment of US$ 275 million that the Bill and Melinda
Gates Foundation has put into the Grand Challenges in Global Health
programme (Varmus et al., 2003). The Institute for OneWorld Health,
a US-based organization, aims to do something similar by identifying
promising drug and vaccine candidates, developing them into safe,
effective and affordable medicines, and then forming partnerships with
companies and organizations in the developing world to manufacture
and distribute them. The Drugs for Neglected Diseases Initiative is
working along similar lines. Their models have not speciﬁcally taken into
account genetic diversity, but with increasing knowledge, this might
become a factor to consider in their surveys of drugs that are unlikely to
be made commercial by big pharmaceutical companies.
Unexpected benef its
The compounds discovered in the research and development laboratories
of developing countries may be of greater interest to big pharmaceutical
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

P
e
t
e
r

A
.

S
i
n
g
e
r
Pharmaco-
genetics and
Geographical
Ancestry:
Implications
for drug
development
and global
health
91
companies if they can be tested in selected minority subpopulations in
developed countries. For example, compounds that are found to be effective
in Asian Indians in India might be of interest to United States pharmaceutical
companies to market to the signiﬁcant population of Asian Indians in the
United States. Conversely, drugs developed by smaller companies in the
developed world for their minority populations could become useful
for people in developing countries: NitroMed, which developed BiDil
for African-American patients, might want to partner pharmaceutical
companies in developing countries to test and market the drug in sub-
Saharan Africa.
The increasing numbers of drugs that will need to be tested clinically
on segmented populations will put further pressure on the already
grossly over-burdened capacity to perform clinical trials, particularly
in the United States. The large number of clinical trials being carried
out in the United States at any one time is already increasing pressure
to test these drugs in developing countries (Daar and Singer, 2002).
This will drive the trend to partner with pharmaceutical companies
and organizations that carry out contract research in developing
countries. A beneﬁcial outcome of such partnerships will be that
the drugs being tested might be marketed locally in developing
countries, in addition to the minority population of interest in
the developed country. Furthermore, the results of clinical trials
of drugs developed in the developed world and then tested on
patients in developing countries will be more meaningful for those
populations in developing countries in which they were tested.
Conversely, the results of clinical trials carried out speciﬁcally in
minority populations, such as the trial for BiDil tested on African
Americans in the United States, will also be more meaningful for
patients in those developing countries from which the minorities
originated.
The cost efﬁciency associated with the drug development
strategy of prospective efﬁcacy pharmacogenetics (Roses,
2004) will result in less-expensive drugs for patients in
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
92
developing countries. When drugs are prescribed to groups
who are unlikely to enjoy any beneﬁt (and may also suffer
adverse effects), the national cost of health-care is signiﬁcantly
higher than it need be otherwise. In Mexico, the doses of
many drugs have to be altered signiﬁcantly because they
are either ineffective or too toxic at the levels recommended
for the ‘general’ North American population. For example, L-
asparaginase, an anti-cancer drug is given at lower doses in
Mexico than in the United States to minimize toxicity (pancreatitis
and/or hyperglycemia). By contrast, doses of the anti-cancer drug
6-mercaptopurine that are toxic in the United States population
produce less-intense adverse effects in Mexican populations. So
far, this is largely anecdotal, but the study of Mexican genomic
diversity and its implications for public health is one of the priorities
of the Mexican Institute of Genomic Medicine (Jimenez-Sanchez,
2003).
Pharmacogenetics may also feature in post-marketing surveillance. For
example, some sub-Saharan African populations have a polymorphism
in the ABCB1 (ATP-binding cassette, sub-family B (MDR/TAP), member
1) gene, which encodes the multidrug transporter P-glycoprotein,
such that the carriers of this polymorphism might not beneﬁt from
antiretroviral therapy (Schaeffeler et al., 2001). This ﬁnding might
translate into the closer scrutiny and the early withdrawal of those
drugs that are found to be ineffective, saving many lives and millions of
dollars. This will also stimulate the search for drugs that can bypass the
effects of the polymorphism.
In terms of disease susceptibility, HIV demonstrates the importance of
understanding genomic variation in human patients. A subpopulation of
people with a 32-base pair deletion in the chemokine (C-C motif) receptor
5 (CCR5) gene (the CCR5-Δ32 mutant allele) are sero-negative and healthy,
despite repeated exposure to HIV1 infection, because the mutation prevents
expression of the CCR5 receptor on cell surfaces, which HIV uses to gain
entry through mucosal surfaces. Strategies are being pursued to reduce
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

P
e
t
e
r

A
.

S
i
n
g
e
r
Pharmaco-
genetics and
Geographical
Ancestry:
Implications
for drug
development
and global
health
93
susceptibility to HIV infection by blocking the CCR5 receptor (Marmor,
2001). Recently, United States and Swiss researchers reported that coating
the vaginal surfaces of macaque monkeys with an experimental drug that
binds to CCR5 protects the monkeys against SIV (simian immunodeﬁciency
virus) infection (Lederman et al., 2004).
Large-scale genotyping studies will give us greater insight into the
distribution and frequency of genetic variation that has important public
health implications.
Conclusion
Our increasing understanding of human genomic variation, and
speciﬁcally its application in pharmacogenetics, might shift our
focus away from interindividual differences towards interpopulation
differences. In this article, we have made three main points. First, that
pharmacogenetics can be made relevant to developing countries,
where it might reduce national health-care bills. Essential drug lists
in the future might have to take into account possible genomic
variations between populations in developing countries. As often
happens, for example with biotechnology (Thorsteinsdóttir et al.,
2004), it is the people in developing countries (who make up about
85% of the world’s population) who could beneﬁt the most in the
long term from cutting-edge science and technology (vaccines are
a good example) (Acharya et al., 2003).
Our second point is that a deeper understanding of the genotypes
of local populations with little admixture may make it possible,
perhaps through the short-cuts and cost efﬁciencies promised
by haplotype mapping, to predict drug responses without the
need to test each individual. This application will require caution
and validation, but it could make an important contribution
to improving drug use in economically deprived populations
before the advent of personalized medicine.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
94
Finally, there are potential opportunities for pharmaceutical
companies and contract-research organizations in developing
countries to capitalize on emerging trends in genotyping and
their application to understanding variable drug responses and
disease susceptibility. Such opportunities, if applied properly,
will beneﬁt the health of people in developing countries.
Future outlook
We have some way to go before the vision of real beneﬁts
of pharmacogenetics to developing countries materializes.
Substantial knowledge gaps will need to be addressed by well-
designed studies in multiple populations (Collins, 2004). There are
also conceptual and technical problems that need to be resolved,
and the use of population groups – at least as currently conceived in
terms of race and other unsatisfactory descriptors that conﬂate with
social constructions – is fraught with ethical and social problems that
will need to be addressed with interdisciplinary research. The most
satisfactory term for population groups at present is emerging as
‘geographical ancestry’; but as data accumulate, we may discover other
terms for communities of common ancestry that are more scientiﬁcally
accurate and that avoid social constructions completely, making it
possible to move forward with less likelihood of controversy. We need
to change the paradigm from ‘race’ to human genome variation (Royal
and Dunston, 2004).
If we are to help reduce global health inequities we must continue to
support efforts to deﬁne the nature of human variation across the world,
focused primarily on medical goals (Collins, 2004). We need to formulate
clear, scientiﬁcally accurate messages to educate researchers, health-care
professionals and the general public on the connections between race,
ethnicity, genetics and health. For developing countries not to be left
behind, to harness useful knowledge for their populations, and to avoid
pitfalls, their researchers and policy-makers must participate in this important
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

P
e
t
e
r

A
.

S
i
n
g
e
r
Pharmaco-
genetics and
Geographical
Ancestry:
Implications
for drug
development
and global
health
95
discourse as early as possible. We need an innovative global approach,
such as the proposed Global Genomics Initiative (Acharya et al., 2004),
to bring together industry, academia, non-governmental organizations
and international organizations, such as the World Health Organization,
to examine how pharmacogenetics and pharmacogenomics can best
be harnessed to improve the health of people in developing countries.
Pharmaceutical and biotechnology companies from both developed and
developing countries should plan for the long term and consider the
realities of the developing world, because that is where there will be the
largest population growth, disease burden, drug demand and future
markets. If markets won’t work, public-private partnerships will probably
be created to address the important needs of developing countries.
Academics should begin empirical case studies of genotyping projects
in developing countries and of early applications of pharmacogenetics
in both developed and developing countries to identify good practices
and avoid pitfalls.
We thank Stephen W. Scherer of the Hospital for Sick Children, Toronto; Charles
Scriver of McGill University, Montreal; and Adrian Ivinson of the Harvard Center for
Neurodegeneration and Repair, for reading the manuscript and making suggestions for
improvement; and Nadia A. Daar for her help in preparing the manuscript. The Canadian
Program on Genomics and Global Health is supported by Genome Canada through the
Ontario Genomics Institute, and by the Ontario Research and Development Challenge
Fund, and other funders listed at the Canadian Program on Genomics and Global Health.
The authors declare no competing ﬁnancial interests.
References
Acharya, T., Daar, A. S. and Singer, P. A. 2003. Biotechnology and
the UN’s millennium development goals. Nature Biotechnology, Vol. 21,
pp. 1434–1436.
Acharya, T., Daar, A. S., Thorsteinsdóttir, T., Dowdeswell, E. and
Singer, P. A. 2004. Strengthening the role of genomics in global
health. PLoS Med. Vol. 1, e40.
E
t
h
i
c
s

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
102
general discussions of how biomedical technology should be
developed and implemented.
Organ transplantation has been hailed as one of the most
remarkable achievements in medical history. The original
kidney transplant successes of the mid-1950s were between
genetically identical human twins whose immune systems
would not recognize each other’s organs as genetically foreign
(and therefore would not reject them). Soon thereafter, kidneys
for transplantation were obtained from non-twin siblings,
from unrelated living donors and, ﬁnally, from cadavers. These
transplants between members of the same species are known as
allotransplants and, apart from the rare identical twin transplants,
all require some form of manipulation of the recipients’ immune
systems to prevent rejection of the donated organ.
Medical advances, particularly the discovery of powerful new
immunosuppressive drugs, have greatly increased the number
of transplants performed worldwide. Today, where facilities and
expertise are available, it is fairly routine to transplant kidneys, hearts,
livers, lungs, and other organs and tissues between human beings.
However, this very success has created a disparity between the demand
and supply of organs. As a result, thousands of patients die every year
while waiting to receive a suitable organ for transplant. The situation is
particularly severe in developing countries. Were xenotransplantation to
become an effective and inexpensive method of addressing end-stage
organ failure, however, the same social and economic issues that limit
the ability to maintain transplant programmes in developing countries
today will hinder efforts to develop and maintain xenotransplantation
programmes. Basic health care needs (such as vaccination, basic diagnostics,
and drugs) and the need for access to clean water will compete with any
advanced technology for limited health-care dollars.
Allotransplantation raised important ethical issues, many of which continue
to be debated (Dossetor and Daar, 2001). While xenotransplantation
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

L
o
u
i
s
a

E
.

C
h
a
p
m
a
n
Xeno-
transplantation
103
raises similar issues, especially in terms of equity of access and diversion of
resources, it also raises issues pertaining to human rights, animal welfare
and public health risks.
Xenotransplantation def ined
While consensus is not universal, xenotransplantation is deﬁned as ‘any
procedure that involves the transplantation, implantation, or infusion
into a human recipient of either (a) live cells, tissues, or organs from
a nonhuman animal source; or (b) human body ﬂuids, cells, tissues,
or organs that have had ex vivo contact with live nonhuman animal
cells, tissues, or organs.’ This is the deﬁnition adopted by the U.S.
Public Health Services, and the Council of Europe has a similar one.
This deﬁnition would include transplantation of an animal heart into a
patient with heart failure, implantation of pancreatic islets for people
with diabetes, circulation of blood from a patient with acute liver
failure through a nonhuman liver or a device containing nonhuman
liver cells, or the treatment of burn patients using human skin cells
that have been grown ex vivo (outside the body) over a layer of
mouse feeder cells. The transplantation of inert animal tissue (such
as pig heart valves) does not fall under this deﬁnition.
Scientif ic and clinical state-of-the-art:
Continuing challenges
Tables 1 and 2 summarize the attempts at clinical xeno-
transplantation since the 1960s. With the exception of the
inexplicable survival for nine months of a kidney transplanted
from a chimpanzee into a human recipient in the 1960s, all
whole-organ xenotransplants have failed rapidly, despite
massive immunosuppression of the human recipients. In
contrast, a number of preclinical trials of cellular therapies
have shown enough promise to justify progressing to clinical
104
trials. These include neural-cell transplants to treat disorders
such as Parkinson’s disease, intractable epilepsy and other
degenerative neurologic diseases (Fink et al., 2000). There
have also been attempts at perfusing the blood of patients in
acute liver failure ex vivo through nonhuman animal livers until
a human liver becomes available or the patient recovers (Chari
et al., 1994). However, as of April 2003, no xenotransplantation
application has demonstrated a high enough level of efﬁcacy in
clinical trials to allow progression to general clinical adoption.
Table 1: Summary of clinical organ xenotransplantation
during the 1960s, 1970s and 1980s
Year Source Animal Number Investigator
Kidney
1964 Chimpanzee 12 Reemtsma
1964 Monkey 1 Reemtsma
1964 Baboon 1 Hitchcock
1964 Baboon 6 Starzl
1964 Chimpanzee 1 Hume
1964 Chimpanzee 3 Traeger
1965 Chimpanzee 2 Goldsmith
1966 Chimpanzee 1 Cortesini
Heart
1964 Chimpanzee 1 Hardy
1968 Sheep 1 Cooley
1968 Pig 1 Ross
1968 Pig 1 Ross
1969 Chimpanzee 1 Marion
1977 Baboon 1 Barnard
1977 Chimpanzee 1 Barnard
1984 Baboon 1 Bailey
Liver
1966 Chimpanzee 1 Starzl
1969 Chimpanzee 2 Starzl
1969 Baboon 1 Bertoye
1970 Baboon 1 Leger
1970 Baboon 1 Marion
1971 Baboon 1 Poyet
1971 Baboon 1 Motin
1974 Chimpanzee 1 Starzl
Source: Council of Europe Working Party on Xenotransplantation. Report on the state
of the art in the ﬁeld of xenotransplantation. February 21, 2003
Xeno-
transplantation
105
Table 2: Summary of clinical trials on organ and cell xenotransplantation
during the 1990's.

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
106
between individuals of the same species. Xenotransplant
rejection responses are, however, also less severe in transplants
between members of closely related (concordant) species,
such as between rats and mice. A carbohydrate molecule
known as Gal alpha-1, 3 Gal (alpha-gal) is present on all cells
of most mammalian species, including pigs, which at present
are considered the most likely source-animal species. Humans
and closely related old-world primates such as chimpanzees lack
alpha-gal, but have naturally occurring antibodies that recognize
it as foreign. In hyperacute rejection these antibodies would
react against the alpha-gal on pig cells, causing the blood to clot
(thrombosis) and the transplanted organ to die within minutes.
Activation of complement, a substance found in blood, is part of the
normal defence mechanism against foreign tissue or microbes. The
presence of chemical substances that inactivate complement when
its work is done normally prevents thrombosis. These complement
factor regulatory proteins (CRPs) are species-speciﬁc. Thus one of the
scientiﬁc responses to the challenge of hyperacute rejection has been to
create transgenic pigs in which the genes for various human CRPs have
been incorporated into the pig’s genome, and thus prevent thrombosis.
Experiments in which tissue from these transgenic pigs was transplanted
into nonhuman primates have shown better graft survival rates than those
using tissue from unmodiﬁed pigs, raising hopes that similar improved
results would be reproduced in human recipients.
Another genetic approach to dealing with hyperacute rejection has
aimed to alter the expression of the alpha-gal molecule on pig tissue
by inserting genes that result in carbohydrate remodeling (Sandrin et
al.,1995); by reducing the expression of alpha-gal (Sharma et al., 1996);
or by ‘knocking out’ (removing) the gene for the enzyme that is involved
in making alpha-gal (Tearle et al., 1996). A double knock-out pig (a pig in
which both copies of the gene have been deleted from its genome) was
announced in 2002 (Phelps et al., 2003). Others have focused on reducing
the massive inﬂammatory responses.
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

L
o
u
i
s
a

E
.

C
h
a
p
m
a
n
Xeno-
transplantation
107
Other immunological challenges. Hyperacute rejection is only one
challenge facing xenotransplantation. Even if hyperacute rejection can be
avoided, progressive phases of rejection would follow, including acute
vascular rejection, cellular rejection, and chronic rejection.
Related research focuses on attempts to manipulate the immune system
of higher animals in ways that would make it ‘tolerate’ one, or a few,
foreign antigens without paralyzing the whole immune system. Should
immunological tolerance be achieved in humans, it would become
possible to transplant organs without administering the large doses of
powerful immunosuppressive drugs that leave the recipients vulnerable
to dangerous infections.
Physiological barriers. Physiological barriers may also stand in the
way of successful xenotransplantation. For example, there is serious
doubt that a pig liver will be able to sustain a human being for long.
The liver is not only a detoxifying and storage organ, it is the main
factory in the body for the manufacture of a large number of crucial
molecules, including proteins such as albumin and clotting factors.
Many of these are species-speciﬁc and will function inadequately
in humans (Hammer and Thein, 2001), and some may also evoke
immune reactions. In contrast, porcine insulin has successfully treated
human diabetics; thus porcine pancreatic islet transplantation may
offer human diabetics hope for a cure.
Xenogeneic infections
Another reason for caution is that infections not normally
encountered in humans might be transmitted from source
animals to human recipients. In addition to the risk to the
recipient, there is a theoretical risk that an infected recipient
could transmit the infection to others. Of particular concern in
this regard are infectious agents such as retroviruses that result
in persistent infections and remain clinically quiescent for
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
108
long periods before causing identiﬁable disease. During that
‘silent’ period they can be transmitted from person to person,
infecting many people before the danger is recognized.
In the past, animal viruses, such as Nipah virus and avian
inﬂuenza, have been known to infect humans, resulting in
outbreaks of disease of limited scope and duration (CDC, 1998,
1999). Of even greater concern is evidence that viruses once
restricted to a nonhuman host species may infect and adapt to
humans as a host species, as is theorized to have occurred with the
HIV/AIDS pandemic (Hahn et al., 2000). There is some controversy
about whether nonhuman primates are more likely than other
species to transmit dangerous infections to humans (Chapman et
al, 1995). In response to widespread concern, the U.S. Food and
Drug Administration produced an advisory in April 1999 against the
use of primates as source animals pending adequate demonstration
of safety.
Exogenous infection (infections from agents passed among animals by
contagion) can theoretically be controlled by eliminating them from
the source animals. More uncertainty exists about the signiﬁcance of
endogenous retroviruses, which exist as part of the genetic material
of humans, nonhuman primates, pigs, mice, and perhaps all animals.
Endogenous retroviruses are passed from one animal to another through
inheritance. Unable to cause active infection in the host animal, many can
produce a virus capable of causing infection in cells from other species
in the laboratory. Thus, living biological material devoid of recognized
microbes has an innate infectious potential of uncertain signiﬁcance for
xenotransplantation. Speciﬁcally, both pigs and nonhuman primates have
been shown to have endogenous retroviruses that can infect human cells
in the laboratory.
Since the pig is the most likely source animal for human clinical xenotransplants,
endogenous retroviruses of pigs have become a major focus of research.
Porcine endogenous retroviruses (PERV) exist in the genomes of all pigs.
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

L
o
u
i
s
a

E
.

C
h
a
p
m
a
n
Xeno-
transplantation
109
Several variants of PERV have been characterized that vary in their infectivity. It
would be difﬁcult, but perhaps possible, to eliminate PERV through breeding
or genetic manipulations (Patience et al., 1997; Stoye, 1998).
In animal experiments, short-lived (but nonclinically obvious) replicative
infections have been documented (van der Laan et al., 2000), and
PERV can be transmitted from pig cells to human cells when they are
cultured together in the laboratory (Patience et al., 1998; Wilson et al.,
1998), but there is currently no convincing evidence that PERV can
cause infections leading to disease in humans. This does not, of course,
exclude the possibility that it may be capable of doing so given the right
circumstances.
Human patients previously exposed to pig tissue. In the past
decade or so a small but signiﬁcant number of patients have been
exposed to various experimental forms of xenotransplantation.
Several studies of these patients have found no evidence of PERV
infection, despite evidence that many of those exposed exhibited
‘microchimerism’ (they had small numbers of pig cells in their bodies
which provided ongoing exposure to PERV). While many scientists
do not consider that these studies conclusively establish the absence
of infectious disease risk associated with xenotransplantation, they
are reassuring to some extent.
Ethical, social and economic issues
Research and development costs for any major new technology,
including xenotransplantation, can be high. If xenotransplantation
progresses from experimentation into clinical practice, the ﬁnal cost
is uncertain. Even beyond the development costs, many factors
will contribute to the expense of a clinical xenotransplantation
programme, including rearing speciﬁc infection-free source
animals, laboratory tests for early diagnosis of infection,
specialized staff, and maintaining monitoring and surveillance
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
110
regimes. Costs will also be determined by companies owning
intellectual property rights to the technologies employed, the
size of the market, and so on. Whether this cost will exceed
the current costs of medication and extended hospital care for
patients awaiting allotransplants is uncertain. It seems likely,
however, that xenotransplantation, like allotransplantation,
would initially beneﬁt only a privileged few.
It has been argued that xenotransplantation efforts could
be justiﬁed only if large numbers of patients could beneﬁt at
reasonable cost and with no signiﬁcant diversion of resources from
the health-care system. In this light, efforts to develop applications
of porcine pancreatic islets for functional cure of type I diabetes
mellitus are the most easily justiﬁed. While many applications of
xenotransplantation research would beneﬁt relatively few patients,
diabetes mellitus affects a large number of people and poses
substantial costs to society, both in terms of economics and in years
of productive life lost.
Precautionary principle versus risk-beneﬁt analysis. It
is possible that the public may eventually beneﬁt indirectly from
successful widespread xenotransplantation due to a decrease in the
societal burdens of health-care costs and years of productive lives lost
due to chronic diseases. The public may, however, also be put at risk
of infections. As a result, although the extent of the risk is not clear,
many nations have regulations that would allow xenotransplant clinical
trials only when using husbandry methods that eliminate exogenous
infectious agents from source animals prior to transplantation, and that
would ensure ongoing monitoring of recipients.
As long as uncertainty about the risk to society exists, different
constituencies will perceive the same scientiﬁc data on public risk in
different ways. Those basing their public-policy decisions on traditional
risk-beneﬁt analysis would tend to favour patients, perhaps at the expense
of the public. Many clinicians and scientists in the transplant community do
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

L
o
u
i
s
a

E
.

C
h
a
p
m
a
n
Xeno-
transplantation
111
this instinctively, emphasizing the beneﬁts in terms of a moral imperative to
ameliorate suffering and save lives. This attitude is reﬂected by the Institute
of Medicine’s statement that ‘our own humanity is diminished if, in order to
protect ourselves, we turn away from others whose suffering is both clearly
visible ... and ... devastating in ... impact ... we are morally obliged, not only
as individuals but as a community, to accept some risk to ourselves to save
our fellow human beings from more certain harm’ (Institute of Medicine,
1996, p. 71). On the other hand, those who would base decisions on the
‘precautionary principle’ (of which there are several versions) would tend
to pay more attention to the public interest, perhaps at the expense of
needy patients (Daar, 2001).
The precautionary principle originated in environmental risk
discourse but has been adopted into health-policy discussions
partly because of the history of infections with agents that cause
AIDS, mad cow disease and so on. It is easy to misunderstand,
misquote and misuse this concept as there is no single deﬁnition.
There are two well known formulations. The ﬁrst, from Article
15 of the United Nation’s 1992 Rio Declaration on Environment
and Development, states: ‘In order to protect the environment,
the precautionary approach shall be widely applied by States
according to their capabilities. Where there are threats of serious
or irreversible damage, lack of full scientiﬁc certainty shall not
be used as a reason for postponing cost-effective measures to
prevent environmental degradation.’ The second, the so-called
Wingspread Declaration, states: ‘When an activity raises threats
of harm to human health or the environment, precautionary
measures should be taken, even if some cause-and-effect
relationships are not established scientiﬁcally.’
As can be expected, the precautionary principle has become
a subject of intense scholarly debate and ethical analysis
(Saner, 2002). Some have argued that to be true to itself the
precautionary approach requires risk-risk analysis, which would
suggest an alternative formulation for the principle along the
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
112
lines, ‘Public health and environmental policies should attempt
to minimize net risks to public health and the environment
based on the best available scientiﬁc information and their net
anticipated cost to society.’ (Goklany, 2002, p. 1075)
Animal issues. The great British reformer Jeremy Bentham, a
key ﬁgure in the development of utilitarian ethics, was also one
of the earliest advocates for the humane treatment of animals. In
1780 he asked two fundamental questions: (1) ‘The question is not
“Can they reason?” nor “Can they talk?” but “Can they suffer?”’
and (2) ‘What insuperable line prevents us from extending moral
regard to animals?’
Since Bentham’s time, it has become widely recognized that all
vertebrates essentially perceive pain in the same way. Some argue
that animals can also suffer. Animals reared in stressful conditions in
captivity experience fear, boredom, isolation and separation anxiety.
Recent evidence indicates that the great apes are capable of using
language, including human words (BBC), and also exhibit forms of
culture. The emotional repertoire of nonhuman primates, according
to ethologists Jane Goodall and Dian Fossey, includes love, sorrow and
jealousy. These attributes have led some to argue that such animals are
more than just sentient beings and that they possess intrinsic value. If
so, then they must have rights. To some, ignoring these rights is a form
of speciesism, a term analogous to racism, and a growing minority are
embracing this view.
The awareness of such qualities of animal life raises serious questions: What
is it in humans that bestows on us the right to kill an animal for our own
self-interest? Is it our complex use of language and tools? Is it our rationality,
intentionality, consciousness, conscience or empathy? Immanuel Kant argued
that all nonhuman animals can be regarded as means to ends, and that only
humans, who are ‘rational beings’, have the intrinsic right to be considered
as ends in themselves. If capacity for rational thought is the basis of intrinsic
rights, some have questioned whether we are justiﬁed in using organs taken
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

L
o
u
i
s
a

E
.

C
h
a
p
m
a
n
Xeno-
transplantation
113
from a nonhuman primate but not those taken from an anencephalic, or severely
retarded, human. Philosophic justiﬁcations for the prohibition against killing
incapacitated humans for such purposes have referenced their memories, if
any, their potential to grow and form lasting relationships, their capacity to
be mourned for long periods, and the effect that using their organs would
have on relationships between humans. Others justify this distinction based
on religious or metaphysical notions of the inherent elevation of humans
above other creatures. These views are not convincing to many animal
rights advocates, however.
Nonhuman primates and pigs. Nonhuman primates are biologically
close to humans, and many humans feel an emotional attachment to them.
They are a concordant species, and would therefore be easier to use as
sources for xenotransplantation (from an immunological and physiological
perspective) than pigs, which are a discordant species. However, there
are several arguments against using them for such purposes. First, the
microorganisms they harbour may more easily infect and be pathogenic
in humans than would be the case with pigs. Humans have a long
history of contact with the pig and the resultant physical proximity
has only rarely led to the acquisition of serious infections. Second, it
is not possible to raise primates under the husbandry conditions that
currently allow for the production of pig herds from which exogenous
infectious agents of concern have been excluded (speciﬁc-pathogen-
free pigs). Third, some primate species (e.g. the chimpanzee) are
endangered. While the baboon exists in large numbers and is
considered a pest in some parts of the world, it breeds slowly (and
it is currently impossible to rear speciﬁc-pathogen-free baboons).
Thus, a consensus to exclude nonhuman primates as source animals
for xenotransplantation has emerged.
There are laws to protect research animals in many countries.
Sensible guidelines include the 3 Rs of Russell and Burch (1959)
– namely to ‘reduce, replace, and reﬁne’ – to which we might
now add ‘respect and reconsider’. There are increased efforts
underway to look for alternatives to animal use.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
114
Genetic manipulation of animals for human purposes.
The recently acquired power to manipulate the genomes of
animals, including the ability to produce ‘double knock-outs’
and to clone these over several generations raises an important
ethical question: Where do we draw the line? The Kennedy
Report (1997) and other similar reports have concluded that the
current extent of manipulating the pig’s genome to incorporate
human genes or other manipulations of the same magnitude
raise little ethical concern provided the pig ‘recognizably
remains a pig.’ Today, on balance, a case has been made that
it is ethically acceptable to use pig organs, but not organs from
nonhuman primates, for human xenotransplantation. At this stage
of development a larger consensus exists on the importance of
attending to ‘animal welfare’ than to ‘animal rights’.
Religious perspectives on xenotransplantation. The views of
different religions concerning xenotransplantation largely depend
on the manner in which these religions consider animals and how
they should be treated. From the religious perspective, it would
be important that a xenotransplant not tamper with the human
personality or the individual’s freedom, and ability, and eligibility
to bear responsibility. Minimally, all religions consider that humans
have stewardship responsibilities to minimize the pain and suffering of
animals being used for the beneﬁt of humans.
Within the three major monotheistic religions (Judaism, Christianity and
Islam), human beings have canonically been considered unique, with the
rest of creation existing to serve humankind. The Old Testament, the ﬁrst
ﬁve chapters of which are canonical to both Jews and Christians, declares:
‘Man was made in God’s image and has dominion over all other creatures
and all the earth.’ (Genesis 1:26). In both Judaism and Islam the imperative
to preserve human life overcomes many religious prohibitions.
The pig is considered to be ritually unclean in both Islam and Judaism,
and it is not surprising that authorities in these two religions have been
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

L
o
u
i
s
a

E
.

C
h
a
p
m
a
n
Xeno-
transplantation
115
asked if the pig can be used as a source animal for organs. In Islam, the
conclusion of the majority seems to be that this would not be a barrier to
xenotransplantation, based on the Shariah principle that need and necessity
can allow that which is forbidden – and that, in any case, the prohibition
is only from eating pig tissue. Scholars of Judaism have come to a similar
conclusion (Rosner, 1999). There is, however, a minority opinion in Islam
that pigs, because they are ritually unclean, cannot be used as source
animals.
A number of thoughtful Christian commentators have written about
xenotransplantation. On the whole, these are generally accepting, while
emphasizing that animal suffering should be minimized. The Catholic
Church addressed xenotransplantation as far back as 1956, and in 2000
Pope John Paul II restated its permissive position:
1
It is not my intention to explore in detail the problems connected with this
form of intervention. I would merely recall that already in 1956 Pope Pius XII
raised the question of their legitimacy. He did so when commenting on the
scientiﬁc possibility, then being presaged, of transplanting animal corneas
to humans. His response is still enlightening for us today: in principle, he
stated, for a xenotransplant to be licit, the transplanted organ must not
impair the integrity of the psychological or genetic identity of the person
receiving it; and there must also be a proven biological possibility that the
transplant will be successful and will not expose the recipient to inordinate
risk.
Some Christian arguments against xenotransplantation have
focused on the themes of ‘playing God’ and ‘interfering with
creation’. These arguments have less emphasis in Judaism and
Islam.
Hinduism, Buddhism and some Animist traditions have not
drawn such a sharp theological distinction between humans and
other animals, seeing all as part of a hierarchy of creatures, with
indistinct borders between them. Other religions supportive of
xenotransplantation include Baha’i and Sikhism. Those that have
religious concerns about xenotransplantation include Buddhism,
Hinduism and Native American faiths (Council of Europe).
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
116
Regulatory challenges. The uncertain potential for
introducing xenogeneic pathogens has inﬂuenced many
countries to develop speciﬁc policies that incorporate very
stringent safety standards for clinical xenotransplantation.
Some countries have initiated moratoria, while others have
allowed limited and tightly monitored clinical trials. Several
countries have developed policies that advocate caution with
xenotransplantation clinical trials, requiring that they occur only
with regulatory oversight and involve stringent standards for
animal husbandry, particularly for screening and surveillance for
infectious diseases (Bloom, 2001; Tibbel, 2001; OECD, 2000).
The Council of Europe, the European Agency for Evaluation of
Medicinal Products, and the United Kingdom Xenotransplantation
Interim Regulatory Authority (UKXIRA, 2003) are developing speciﬁc
policies on at least certain kinds of xenotransplants that incorporate the
concepts of safety built around pre-xenotransplantation screening to
prevent transmission of infection and post-transplantation surveillance
to maximize the probability of early recognition and containment
of any infections introduced through xenotransplantation. Further,
the European Union has advocated multinational efforts towards
consensus development and collaborative work to minimize threats
from emerging infections in general.
Multinational organizations have recognized infectious disease issues
associated with xenotransplantation as policy issues that transcend
national boundaries. The World Health Organization (WHO) has produced
recommendations for addressing and harmonizing issues related to infection
control, monitoring, sharing of scientiﬁc information, consent and human
rights. Both the WHO and the Organization for Economic Co-operation
and Development (OECD) have recommended that member states develop
regulatory frameworks for xenotransplantation clinical trials, and they have
taken leadership roles that encourage international collaborative efforts to
minimize infectious risks and actively discourage expatriate xenotransplantation
experiments in countries with poor regulatory environments.
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

L
o
u
i
s
a

E
.

C
h
a
p
m
a
n
Xeno-
transplantation
117
Some professional societies were early critics of efforts to bring
xenotransplantation clinical trials under special regulatory oversight.
In recent years, however, most professional societies have been active
advocates for clinical trials under regulatory oversight with stringent
husbandry and infection surveillance standards. Many professionals
working in xenotransplantation are concerned about ‘xenotourism’
(the migration of patients across geopolitical boundaries to obtain
unregulated xenotransplantation ‘therapies’). These patients may
undergo risky procedures without adequate understanding, and they
may bring unrecognized infections back to their home communities.
Further, professionals who conduct expatriate xenotransplantation
clinical trials potentially endanger the ability of the ﬁeld to move
forward in a systematic way. In an effort to discourage such practices,
the International Xenotransplantation Society has adopted a rule that
reports of such experiments will not be accepted for presentation at its
meetings or for publication in its journals.
Managing potential conﬂicts of interest. The increasing
participation of private interests in biomedical research is an
important trend. One of the key catalysts of this change in the
United States was the passage in 1980 of the Bayh-Dole act, which
transferred intellectual property rights to researchers funded by
federal research monies. In addition, universities in many countries
must now attract more private funding to function in a very
competitive environment. As a result, companies and investigators
with potential conﬂicts of interest (COI) are testing increasingly
powerful experimental therapeutic interventions.
Identifying ways to deal with potential COI while introducing
innovative therapies is a complex issue and a constant source
of ethical tension. Many would argue that full disclosure of
ﬁnancial and other COI by both institutions and investigators
is adequate to manage such COI. Others have argued that
disclosure alone may not sufﬁce, and that even a pilot trial
should not be conducted if an institution has a major ﬁnancial
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
118
interest in the outcome (Emanuel and Steiner, 1995). The
Institute of Medicine has observed, ‘Clinical trials with cellular
xenotransplants are already under way, and a real danger exists
that the commercial applications of xenotransplant technology
will outstrip both the research base and the national capacity to
address special issues raised by xenotransplantation, including
the risk of disease transmission.’ (Executive Summary, p. 4)
Timing of clinical introduction of xenotransplantation
of whole organs. Although small-scale experimental clinical
xenotransplantation of cells and xenotransplantation involving
ex vivo contact of human living cells with living nonhuman
animal cells is underway in some countries, the question of when
it would be prudent to translate laboratory successes into clinical
trials remains open. The accepted standard is that, before clinical
trials are attempted in humans, preclinical research should provide
proof of the principle hypothesis adequate to anticipate that
humans may beneﬁt from the experiment. However, no consensus
has been reached on what would constitute adequate graft survival
in animal experiments to justify clinical trials. Attempts to deﬁne
this crucial criterion have ranged from a median survival time of a
minimum of three months to the suggestion that, although it is likely
that hyperacute rejection can be prevented, xenotransplants should
be delayed until there is a better understanding of acute vascular and
cellular responses (Cooper et al., 2000).
Epidemiological surveillance and post-transplant patient
monitoring. In the past, infections transferred across species boundaries
(e.g. HIV-AIDS, parvoviruses, SARS coronavirus) have spread globally. The
development of international surveillance for xenotransplantation-associated
infections has been proposed as a way to assist countries to manage risks
associated with infections introduced through xenotransplantation performed
within and beyond their borders (Ronchi, 2001). Such recommendations raise
concerns for many people. The concept of lifelong international surveillance
of xenotransplant recipients is fraught with ethical complexities. International
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

L
o
u
i
s
a

E
.

C
h
a
p
m
a
n
Xeno-
transplantation
119
consensus has not been achieved on the deﬁnition of xenotransplantation,
on what constitutes a xenogeneic infection or disease, on what events
should be reported and by what methods, or on which individuals should
constitute the population under surveillance. Whether a surveillance system
should only report transmission of xenogeneic infections from recipients to
their contacts, or should go further to collect information on the contacts
themselves, is a source of controversy. All proposed national policies for
monitoring xenotransplantation recipients are intrusive. Most advise against
unprotected sex, donation of blood or other biological materials, and for
education of intimate contacts. Some go further to require the consent of
intimate partners for xenotransplantation, active surveillance of intimate
contacts as well as xenotransplant recipients, and pre-transplantation
agreements to avoid procreation post-xenotransplantation.
Patient–physician relationships and consent. The perceived
potential for xenotransplantation to beneﬁt an individual while
putting the larger community at risk complicates both the patient-
physician relationship and the issue of informed consent. The Helsinki
Declaration on Ethical Principles for Medical Research Involving
Human Subjects states that, in medical research on human subjects,
considerations related to the well being of the human subject
should take precedence over the interests of science and society.
Xenotransplantation clinical trials present situations that may place
the interests of recipients and the greater good of society at odds.
If a doctor is required to think of the public interest rather than
merely the interests of the immediate patient, the traditional
role of the physician as patient advocate is altered. At best,
this will create confusion, since the physicians must weigh the
responsibility to individual patients against the public good. At
worst, the doctor-patient relationship itself could become one of
antagonism rather than of trust (Daar, 1997).
The current informed-consent requirements for patients who
might receive xenotransplants exceed those required in most
other research settings. A major question on which there is
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
120
no consensus at present is the problem of what to do if a
patient changes her or his mind about intrusive follow-up
monitoring and the waiver or curtailment of conﬁdentiality
rights previously agreed to. Informed consent is not usually
legally binding on the patient, who retains a right to withdraw
participation at any point in the investigational process.
Given the expectations of lifelong follow-up for initial
xenotransplant recipients, a different kind of consent has been
discussed (Daar, 1999). A speciﬁc legal contract might provide
enforceability of pre-transplant agreements for lifelong monitoring.
Unlike the traditional consent form, such a contract would allow
speciﬁc curtailment of the patient’s rights. (The traditional consent
procedure does not, in all cases, require that a document be signed;
more often than not, the signed form protects the doctor more
than the patient.) Such a legal contract would be a radical departure
from current accepted norms, since it would directly conﬂict with
the present emphasis on the primacy of respect for the autonomy of
the research subject. Thus, these issues are fraught with controversy.
Models to build on. Are there any precedents in which a patient
can decide in advance what medical treatment she or he would want
to receive in the future? Both ‘advance directives’ and the so-called
‘Ulysses contract’ fall into this category.
Advance directives are used in medicine as a means by which patients
declare their wishes in anticipation of a future day when they may not
be competent to make decisions. Such an instrument has been used,
for example, to establish the point at which a patient desires a ‘do not
resuscitate’ status. It could be adapted to allow a mentally competent
xenotransplantation recipient to make provision for intrusive post-transplant
medical monitoring (with its attendant curtailment of certain rights) to
continue if the recipient changes her or his mind – a situation that might
occur if, for example, the graft fails but monitoring must continue in order
to protect public health.
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

a
n
d

L
o
u
i
s
a

E
.

C
h
a
p
m
a
n
Xeno-
transplantation
121
This would be more akin to a ‘Ulysses contract’. In Greek mythology,
Ulysses was a strong, good man. He knew he would sail near the Sirens
whose enchanting songs would overcome him and cause his ship to
be destroyed. He ordered his sailors to plug their ears and, wanting to
hear the songs, had himself tied to the mast of the ship, ordering his
companions not to release him regardless of his subsequent demands. A
Ulysses contract, then, is used for patients who are likely to experience
periods of incompetence in the future, such as patients with psychiatric
disorders characterized by alternating periods of therapy-induced
competence and incompetence. While they are in a competent state,
they can specify treatment decisions for future occasions. In the
xenotransplant setting, such a binding advance directive signed by the
recipient prior to the xenotransplantation could, theoretically, be used
to forcibly investigate, treat, or even conﬁne a recipient who fails to
meet responsibilities to the public agreed to prior to the procedure
(Daar, 1999). A Ulysses contract usually assumes that the subject is so
affected as to have their ‘true’ judgement subordinated by some other
pressure, while in this instance the xenotransplantation recipient
may merely have changed her or his mind about cooperating
with intrusive surveillance. Discussion of these options has raised
concerns about the possibility of unacceptably eroding the human
rights of research participants on the basis of hypothesis and fear
rather than established or proximate risk.
Public engagement and public consent. Some people have
argued that since the public is going to be exposed to some level
of risk of xenogeneic infections, the public must be consulted, and
must consent, before xenotransplantation clinical trials proceed.
Many national reports recommend that the public must in some
way be consulted before proceeding with xenotransplantation.
It is, however, difﬁcult to deﬁne what would constitute ‘public
consent’. Further, efforts at public education can easily merge
over into propaganda, since the opinions formed by non-experts
are completely dependent on the nature and presentation of
the information they receive.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
122
While some have advocated a moratorium pending public
consent (Bach et al., 1998) there are signiﬁcant problems
with adopting a moratorium. The majority of researchers and
clinicians appear to be opposed to this position, mainly because
moratoria remove from public discourse the very issues that ought
to be addressed. Most researchers and clinicians would encourage
increased capacity to evaluate the potential social consequences as
the technology develops. Signiﬁcantly, there have been no serious
calls for reduction in xenotransplantation research.
Canada has undertaken a major public engagement exercise
consisting of a series of forums involving education, discussion
and ‘citizen juries’. A subsequent report of the Canadian Public
Health Association has recommended that Canada not proceed
with xenotransplantation involving humans until several critical
issues are addressed. It recommends, among other steps, that
further efforts be made to inform and educate the public; that
additional preclinical research be carried out; and that the risks and
probability of beneﬁt from clinical trials be more fully deﬁned. It also
calls for the development of legislation and regulations to cover all
aspects of xenotransplantation clinical trials, concluding that there is
a continuing need to involve the public in discussions about the future
of xenotransplantation. This approach, however, has been criticized as
being vulnerable to biases introduced by the information presented to
the public (Wright, 2002). Nevertheless, this particular exercise reﬂects
the current uncertainties surrounding xenotransplantation.
Conclusion
Xenotransplantation currently describes a multifaceted array of experimental
biotechnological approaches to disease amelioration, some of which have
progressed to small-scale clinical trials. The theoretical risk of infections
spreading from source animal to recipient and then to contacts and the
public has triggered debates on issues of science and on how biomedical
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
130
cadavers the needed tissues. These two domains of activity
use what is largely already available from other human sources
without any further signiﬁcant biomedical interventions.
There is little application, apart from preservation techniques,
of any molecular-level science.
The emerging discipline of regenerative medicine (RM) goes
further than the above. The contours of the ﬁeld of RM are still
being deﬁned. One major focus is tissue engineering, which seeks
to engineer completely new tissue, and in this endeavour it uses
living cells, biodegradable materials and soluble factors (e.g. growth
factors) to build tissues of varying degrees of structural complexity.
In its wildest dreams, RM hopes to build ‘off-the-shelf’ organs (Atkins
and Sefton, 2001; Sefton, 2002), so that one day anyone with a massive
heart attack, say, will be able to receive a ready-made heart, and
ideally this will not be rejected by the body’s immune system. We are
a long way away from that. We still need to identify the best scaffolds
for different tissue constructs. We need to learn much more about
how such tissue constructs interact with the recipient’s own tissues.
We need to learn how the new tissues will integrate both structurally
and functionally, how they will be accepted by the immune system, and
how they will respond to normal biological signals, including hormones
and nerve impulses. Researchers are working hard to develop techniques
to stimulate neo-vascularization and formation of ﬁne capillary beds, and
the ﬁne imaging that is needed to see what is happening at minute levels.
Different biomaterials, including composites, are being tried for different
functions. Other emerging technology platforms, such as nanotechnology,
are being recruited to enable RM. Stem cells and even genetic engineering
will likely play major roles in the future of RM – both these are, of course,
surrounded by ethical controversy (Daar and Sheremata, 2002).
Conceptually what is really exciting is the exploration not of replacement
technologies but of repair technologies, where the body will be encouraged
to repair its own damaged tissue. An exciting, and increasingly realistic,
prospect is spinal cord regeneration. There are promising new laboratory
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r
Regenerative
Medicine:
A taxonomy
for addressing
ethical, legal
and social issues
131
models involving neurotropic factors, stem cells, olfactory sheath cells, and
tiny tubes that guide regenerating nerve tissue.
William Haseltine observes that the key insights of regenerative medicine is
that every human being was once a single cell with the potential to transform
into an adult body; and each of our cells retains that remarkable potential
in a latent form. We have over the past decade learned how to identify the
molecules that our bodies use to direct that great unfolding. We can now
isolate, study, and produce those substances in virtually unlimited quantities
and use them to regenerate our tissues and organs (Haseltine, 2001).
At one level, what is really important is to get a complete understanding
of how the cell functions. One of the emerging institutes dedicated to
regenerative medicine aims to discover the basic principles underlying
how cells form, organize, maintain, regenerate, and repair the proper
three-dimensional structures of tissues and organs.
1
Other institutes
have wider objectives: one aims to provide a national centre of
expertise in regenerative medicine focused on developing and
delivering therapies that re-establish tissue and organ function
impaired by disease, trauma or congenital abnormalities.
2
Unlike the origins of traditional organ transplantation, RM is
developing at a time when many academics are working with,
or moving into, industry on a large scale. Some of the world’s
largest biotechnology companies are involved in various aspects
of RM. The tissue engineering industry has grown phenomenally
recently. There are now many start-up companies engaged in RM
research and development in the USA and Europe, employing
thousands of scientists and support staff. Spending by tissue
engineering ﬁrms has been growing at a compound annual rate
of 16%, and the aggregate investment since 1990 now exceeds
$3.5 billion. The number of companies involved in stem cells
and regenerative medicine is rapidly increasing, and this area
represents the most likely nidus of future growth for tissue
engineering (Lysaght and Reyes, 2001). In industry one of the
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
132
key assets that new companies have is ‘intellectual property’,
of which the most familiar is a patent. Intellectual property is
surrounded by misunderstandings and misinterpretations, and
is ripe for serious academic scholarship (Gold et al., 2002).
There is now a new journal dedicated to RM
3
, which happens
to be edited by William Haseltine, who not only is credited with
coining the term ‘Regenerative Medicine’ but also heads Human
Genome Sciences Inc.
4
, which is one of the largest biotechnology
companies in the world and a pioneer in RM research. His own
history of moving from academia to industry is emblematic of
the new age of biotechnology start-up companies formed rapidly
from scientiﬁc breakthroughs and intellectual property created by
academics.
In summary, while the contours of this new super-discipline are still
being deﬁned and the deﬁnition of RM can be either narrow or very
wide, the ﬁeld is generally about replacement, repair and regeneration
to address deﬁcient organ function resulting from congenital defects,
disease, trauma or wear and tear. Other Rs that perhaps help to
describe the ﬁeld include recover, restore and remodel.
Timelines of the vision
At present we are on the threshold of using human molecules to stimulate
the repair and restoration of natural bodily functions: osteogenic and
vasculogenic factors will likely be in clinical trial or use within about a
decade. Implanting tissues and organs grown outside the body by
treating stem cells with human signalling molecules will likely follow in
the next decade. After that we may be able to reset the genetic clock
within cells, making possible the rejuvenation of aging tissues. It is believed
that such practical implications will be seen within 30 years. It may one
day be possible to use nanotechnology to create artiﬁcial materials that
will integrate seamlessly with our natural ones. The ultimate goal is neuro-
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r
Regenerative
Medicine:
A taxonomy
for addressing
ethical, legal
and social issues
133
mechanical prostheses that will respond smoothly and precisely to neural
and other biological impulses (Haseltine, 2001).
Taxonomy
It is perhaps too early to arrive at a deﬁnitive taxonomy that will
encompass all possible ethical, legal and social issues that may arise.
However, it is possible to devise a taxonomy based on experience with
organ transplantation and on experience with introduction of new
technologies generally (Box 1). Addressing these issues in a constructive
way will enable this emerging ﬁeld to progress rapidly (since the need
for it is enormous already and is growing rapidly, and there may be
indications for various forms of RM that we have not yet imagined
Box 1 | RM Ethical, Legal and Social Implications (RM-
ELSI): An early taxonomy
1. Issues related to transplantation
Allotransplantation
Xenotransplantation
2. Issues related to introduction of new technologies
Regulation (safety, quality control, etc.)
Intellectual property
Management of innovation
Innovation vs. research paradigms
Conﬂict of interest
Commercialization
Equity
Priority setting/resource allocation
3. Issues related to enabling technologies
Nanotechnology
Stem cells
Genetic engineering
4. Issues related to applications
Normality and enhancement
Neuroethics
5. Issue related to public engagement
Cultural issues
Civil society bodies
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
134
today) while we minimize or manage any associated risks and
uphold generally accepted societal values.
Issues related to organ transplantation
The major issue has always been organ shortage and the
subsidiary concerns that this has raised, including payments for
organ procurement, ‘unconventional’ methods of increasing organ
availability such as non-heart-beating donation, presumed consent,
etc. (Dossetor and Daar, 2001). In addition, since it is possible that
nonhuman animal cells, tissues or soluble products may be needed
to facilitate RM, all the issues related to xenotransplantation will need
to be considered. For example, human embryonic stem cells need to
be grown at some stage on a bed of murine feeder cells (this may
change as it is now becoming possible to grow them without this)
and by strict deﬁnition this makes the stem cells xenogeneic material
which requires a different set of regulations. These at present are mainly
related to the unknown risk of xenogeneic infections such as porcine
endogenous retroviruses and the management of this risk in terms of
safety precautions before and after transplantation. Another set of issues
is related to animal welfare and religious considerations. We have recently
reviewed the ethical, legal and social issues of xenotransplantation (Daar
and Chapman, 2004).
Issues related to introduction of new technologies
Any new technology, technology platform or series of technologies
involved in establishing a new modality of intervention (RM falls in this
category) is bound to have its own set of risks. These in turn raise a
number of societal concerns and, generally speaking, it could be said that
the more powerful the technologies, the more issues it raises – especially
if the science is evolving very rapidly and clinical introduction is going
to be rapid; these are all conditions that apply to RM. There is a need to
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r
Regenerative
Medicine:
A taxonomy
for addressing
ethical, legal
and social issues
135
protect human subjects of research and ensure that any procedures and
products are introduced after due deliberation. To gain public support it
is important to avoid early pitfalls in the introduction of RM modalities in
clinical practice. Questions that will need to be addressed include: Will the
development of RM be supported by other disciplines? How can we best
assess demand for RM? Will it increase or decrease costs to the health-care
system? Are there ways of introducing RM that will minimize negative
costs and organizational impacts?
Safety and quality control are paramount, and the involvement of industry
adds another dimension, since commercialization of health related
products always brings to the fore the essential tension between the
need to innovate and the need to ensure that socially useful products
are available for the beneﬁt of all – hence the complicated, confusing
and vexing discourse that surrounds intellectual property. The rights to
control the use and dissemination of RM innovation are an important
element in a country’s ability to encourage an active research and
development agenda, to provide the ﬁnancial stability to industry,
and to ensure access to new health technologies. These rights take on
several forms, the most prominent of which are patents, copyrights
and trade secrets. It is important to understand the intellectual
property rules underlying any area of technological development,
and this is particularly true of foundational technologies, from stem
cells to nanotechnology, that will form the basis of advances in
RM for years to come. Many of the IP issues that arise in current
biotechnologies (Gold et al., 2002) will be relevant to, and
shed light upon, RM. RM technology will likely lead to similar
concerns as have arisen from DNA sequence patenting. As the
recent decision by the Ontario government to challenge Myriad
Genetics on its broad patent over BRCA gene testing for breast
cancer illustrates, intellectual property plays a crucial role in
assuring both innovation and access to good health care at an
affordable cost. The Myriad case highlights the conundrum that
countries like Canada face at a time when its own innovation
system is also encouraging the development of its own
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
136
serious biotechnology industry (Caulﬁeld et al., 2003). If the
investment that countries are putting into RM is to pay off not
only in improved health care but also in commercialization of
RM research, then it is crucial that we examine all issues related
to RM commercialization early.
Clinicians and clinician scientists, particularly in surgery, often
work in the ‘grey zone’ between established practice on the one
hand, and established research on the other; this is the zone of
incremental innovation – maybe small steps that are introduced
in techniques that do not yet amount to research as such, the
latter of course requiring speciﬁc approval by institutional review
boards. In this innovation zone, how do you ensure that the human
subject/patient is protected and that personal and institutional
conﬂicts of interests are managed appropriately? (McKneally and
Daar, 2003)
Finally there is always the issue of equity: Will the new technologies/
therapies be available only to the rich few? This is an issue not only
for individual countries – we must think globally (Benatar et al., 2003),
generally in terms of minimizing huge health disparities but also in
terms of avoiding divides related to particular technologies (Singer and
Daar, 2001; Mnyusiwalla et al., 2003). In this sense, one of the key issues
is how resources are allocated, and the processes of priority setting in
institutions, countries and globally (Martin and Singer, 2003). One of the
most glaring inequities at a global level, for example, is the disturbing fact
that 90% of all health care research dollars are spent on addressing the
needs of only 10% of the world’s population: the so-called 10:90 gap.
Issues related to enabling technologies
RM is the prototypical application ﬁeld in which NBIC (the newly coined term
refers to the convergence of nanotechnology, biotechnology, information
technology and cognitive sciences) is coming to fruition.
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r
Regenerative
Medicine:
A taxonomy
for addressing
ethical, legal
and social issues
137
Nanotechnology. Nanotechnology will likely be an important enabling
set of technologies for RM. Nanotechnology itself has raised a number
of important ethical issues that we are only just beginning to address
now. There is, for example, already a call for a moratorium on developing
new nanotechnology materials. The risks, of course, must be studied very
carefully but uninformed media comments must not hinder proper risk
evaluation or the conduct of research. It is possible that this emerging
technology will be derailed before there has been adequate study of
its ethical, economic, environmental, legal and social implications
(E3LSI). There is an enlarging gap between scientiﬁc research in
nanotechnology and the social evaluation of this emerging technology:
either the ethics will have to speed up or the science will have to
slow down (Mnyusiwalla et al., 2003). Some of the issues that need
to be addressed are those involving privacy, security, environment
and human-machine interface. There are also several important legal
issues (Moore, 2002).
Stem cells. One of the most exciting developments in the
biological sciences in the past decade has been the discovery and
characterization of human embryonic stem cells (ESCs) (Shamblott
et al., 1998) – a discovery that has spurred research into all other
types of stem cells and their potential therapeutic applications.
Stem cells will very likely feature in a major way in RM. There are
already a number of ethical issues that need to be addressed quite
seriously, particularly in relation to embryonic stem cells (Daar
and Sheremata, 2002).
Research is being carried out not only in the developed, but
also in the developing world – China, for example, is one of the
world’s leading countries in stem cell research and in September
2003 Brazilian researchers showed that bone marrow stem
cells, when injected into the left ventricle, can ‘heal’ the hearts
of patients awaiting transplants for heart failure to the extent
that they no longer need a transplant
5
.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
138
There is little controversy surrounding human adult stem cells.
However, ESCs are surrounded by a number of controversies,
the extent of which is partly dependent on their source. Current
sources are existing embryonic stem cell lines (of which there
are fewer than was initially thought); ‘excess’ embryos from in
vitro fertilization (IVF) clinics; IVF embryos speciﬁcally created
so they can be destroyed for their ESCs; parthenogenetic tissue;
and somatic cell nucleus transfer (SCNT). SCNT is controversial
because of the questions it raises regarding the beginnings of life
and the conﬂation with the abortion debate – a subject of major
interest not only to ethicists, but also to religious and political
leaders. A way to approach this subject is through the lens of
a moral ‘singularity’ to focus on the point of transition from an
entity that we owe no special moral consideration to (e.g. a somatic
cell), to one that we do (the Catholic church for example considers
the singularity to occur at conception, Muslims at ensoulment,
etc.) (Daar and Sheremata, 2002). However, there are some recent
scientiﬁc developments that may in the long run reduce or obviate
many of the concerns associated with SCNT (Caulﬁeld et al., 2003):
for example it may one day be possible to reprogram somatic cells
and convert them directly into cells with the functional characteristics
of ESCs without even the need for an oocyte.
The regulatory environment in this area, which is linked to embryo
research generally, is quite variable. It ranges from the more permissive
(e.g. in the United Kingdom, with its Human Embryology and Fertilization
Authority that can license such research
6
) to the nominally much more
restrictive regime in the United States (nominally in the sense that while
federal funds cannot be used for embryo research, private sector money
ﬂows into such research freely and the US Congress seems, so far, to be
unable to pass legislation that is acceptable to all segments of society – a
situation not different from Canada’s) to the truly restrictive (Germany)
(Caulﬁeld, in press).
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r
Regenerative
Medicine:
A taxonomy
for addressing
ethical, legal
and social issues
139
Applications
Neuroethics. The convergence of stem cell technologies, genetic
manipulation, advanced imaging technologies and a richer understanding
of neuroscience will increase our ability to treat a number of common
debilitating neurological conditions, including neuro-trauma, by RM.
It seems likely that addressing neuro-degenerative diseases such as
Parkinson’s and Alzheimer’s will be a substantive part of RM. These
considerations are giving rise to a whole new discipline of ’neuroethics’
which is emerging to address the issues that will arise, for example,
when we begin seriously to perform neurological implantations. It is
also possible that the ethical, legal and social issues here will be more
contentious and more immediate than those raised in genetics research
(The Economist, 2002). There is also the link to xenotransplantation (Daar
and Chapman, 2004): because human fetal tissue is limited by ethical,
infectious, regulatory and practical concerns, other mammalian neural
tissue is being studied as an alternative therapeutic cell source. Phase
I studies of pig fetal neural cells grafted unilaterally into Parkinson’s
disease and Huntington’s disease patients have demonstrated some
improvement in symptoms in Parkinson’s disease patients (Fink et
al., 2000).
RM, normality, therapy and enhancement. These are issues
that will face any technology with potential ‘dual-use’, i.e. that
has the potential not only for treating established derangements
in anatomy and physiology but that can also be used for
enhancement of normality – a subject that has its own baggage
of concerns. The following questions are likely to arise as RM
gets closer to clinical introduction: 1) Is RM any different from
other therapeutic interventions already in use? 2) Can we
deﬁne what distinguishes RM from other therapies? 3) How
do we draw the line between incapacity requiring standard
therapy and that requiring RM intervention? 4) Are there
different levels of RM interventions that require different levels
of concern? 5) Can we develop a taxonomy that clariﬁes
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
140
how we approach these questions such as RM interventions
requiring use of embryonic stem cells versus those that do
not, RM interventions that require immunosuppression versus
those that do not, RM interventions that will clearly raise total
health expenditures versus those that will lower expenditures,
etc.?
Public engagement
Cultural considerations. Human subjects for RM research and
patients receiving RM therapies will inevitably come from different
cultural backgrounds. It is important therefore that RM researchers
and health-care providers be prepared for these cross-cultural
encounters and have guidelines on how to approach sensitive
cultural issues that may arise. Organ transplantation provides some
lessons (Marshall and Daar, 1998). These issues are particularly
sensitive when the heart is involved. The general public considers
heart transplantation being nearly miraculous. The heart is considered
by some cultures as the seat of life. It has many symbolic attachments.
Within some religious traditions life only ends when the heart stops.
Some cultural issues may also arise in relation to neural regeneration
and transplants.
Stakeholder issues: Voluntary health organizations. In many
countries now there are strong civil-society organizations that include
voluntary health organizations (VHOs). These are known by several
other names such as patient groups, patient advocacy organizations,
interest groups, etc. and include in Canada the Muscular Dystrophy
Association, the Juvenile Diabetes Research Foundation, the Heart and
Stroke Foundation, and so forth. VHOs are likely to play a major role in the
unfolding of RM.
VHOs have different histories and origins, different fund-raising capacities,
and different ways of achieving their aims in seeking solutions to reduce the
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r
Regenerative
Medicine:
A taxonomy
for addressing
ethical, legal
and social issues
141
burden of the conditions they represent. Because RM will seek to ameliorate
and even try to heal many of the conditions that are of interest to VHOs, it
is important to understand how their work will help, hinder, or inform the
development of RM both at the research phase and at clinical introduction.
The kinds of questions that arise are: 1) How do VHOs affect research
direction and what is their role in funding, advocacy and involvement in
peer-review processes? and 2) Ought they to have a bigger or smaller
role in these spheres and in building research capacity? We need to
consider their role in mobilizing people to participate in the policy
process as citizens and informing formal and informal coalitions and
alliances. Speciﬁcally in relation to RM, we need to examine what role
they will have in creating demand. Will they help in getting patients to
participate in clinical trials? What is their role in providing information,
including information about alternative treatments, to the public
and to primary health-care providers and where they act as clearing
houses for services? Are there are any scenarios where they might
have conﬂicts of interests? Are there more effective ways of involving
them in RM research, innovation, and clinical introduction and even
perhaps in commercialization of RM?
Conclusion
We have provided here perhaps the ﬁrst taxonomy for evaluating
the ethical, economic, environmental, legal and social issues of
RM. We need careful evaluation of the advances in RM research as
they occur. We need to anticipate what might arise and consider
the implications of commercialization and clinical introduction,
while taking into account and balancing stakeholder interests.
To ensure ethical unfolding, the public should be informed of
developments and should be engaged in decision-making. To
do this well we must address the issues early, seriously, in a
scholarly manner, and in a way that encompasses not only
fundamental moral philosophical reﬂection but also the
application of empirical social sciences methodologies.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
142
This combined approach will likely result in practical guidelines
and regulations that will on the one hand enable regenerative
medicine to develop without unnecessary hindrances, and on
the other ensure that any risks are identiﬁed early, are addressed
adequately and that both patients undergoing research and the
general public are protected.
Grant support for this paper was provided by the Program in Applied Ethics
and Biotechnology, and is supported by the Ontario Research and Development
Challenge Fund, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck & Co., Sun Life Financial, the University
of Toronto, the Hospital for Sick Children, Sunnybrook and Women’s College Health
Science Centre, the University Health Network, the Mount Sinai Hospital Research
Institute and the McLaughlin Centre for Molecular Medicine, University of Toronto.
Notes
1. Morphogenesis and Regenerative Medicine Institute, University of
Virginia. http://www.morphogenesis.virginia.edu/index.htm
2. McGowan Institute for Regenerative Medicine, University of Pittsburgh.
http://www.mirm.pitt.edu/aboutus.htm#mission
3. http://www.liebertpub.com/ebi/default1.asp
4. http://www.hgsi.com/
5. See www.xtramsn.co.nz/health/0,,8071-2633871,00.html
6. http://www.hfea.gov.uk
References
Atkins, R. and Sefton, M. V. 2001. Tissue engineering the human heart. New
Surgery. Vol. 1, pp. 26-32.
Benatar, S. R., Daar, A. S. and Singer, P. A. 2003. Global health ethics: The
rationale for mutual caring. International Affairs, Vol. 79, No. 1, pp. 107-138.
Caulﬁeld, T. A. In Ethical, Legal and Social Issues in Organ Transplantation. Eds.
Daar AS, Guttman T and Land W. Pabst Publishers. Munich. In Press.
Caulﬁeld, T. A., Knoppers, B. M., Gold, E. R., Sheremata, L. E., Bridge, P. J. 2003.
Genetic technologies, health care policy and the patent bargain. Clinical Genetics, Vol.
63, pp. 15-18.
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
144
Sefton, M. V. 2002. Functional considerations in tissue in tissue
engineering whole organs. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences,
Vol. 961, pp. 198-200.
Shamblott, M. J., Axelman, J., Littleﬁeld, J. W. et al. 1998. Proceedings
of the National Academy of Sciences USA, Vol. 98, pp. 113-118.
Singer, P. A. and Daar, A. S. 2001. Harnessing genomics and
biotechnology to improve global health equity. Science, Vol. 294,
pp. 87-89.
C h a p t e r 7
Abdallah S. Daar, Halla Thorsteinsdóttir, Douglas K. Martin,
Alyna C. Smith, Shauna Nast and Peter A. Singer*
Top Ten Biotechnologies
for Improving Health
in Developing Countries*
Most research in genomics and related biotechnologies (in the
rest of this article, we refer to these simply as ‘biotechnologies’)
focuses on the needs of industrialized nations, a manifestation
of the notorious ‘10/90 gap’ whereby 90% of health research
dollars are spent on the health problems of 10% of the world’s
population (Global Forum for Health Research, 2000). Although
a few research teams scattered around the world are studying
the application of new technologies to health problems of
developing countries, their isolated efforts are unlikely to ensure
equity of beneﬁt. The World Health Organization (WHO)
recently released a report titled ‘Genomics and World Health’
that highlights the potential of genomics to improve global
health. It recognizes that resources devoted to health research
in developing countries are limited and that there is an urgent
* Daar, A. S.., Thorsteinsdóttir, H., Martin, D. K., Smith, A. C., Nast,
S. and Singer, P. A. 2002. Top Ten Biotechnologies for Improving
Health in Developing Countries. Nature Genetics, Vol. 32, No. 2,
pp. 229-232.
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
146
need to focus attention on the most promising technologies.
The report recommended that WHO ‘should develop the
capacity to evaluate advances in genomics, to anticipate
their potential for research and clinical application ... and to
assess their effectiveness and cost in comparison to current
practice’ (World Health Organization, 2002). An essential
ﬁrst step in addressing this recommendation is a technology
foresight exercise to identify priority technologies. We have
now completed a foresight study that identiﬁes the ten most
promising biotechnologies for improving health in developing
countries in the next ﬁve to ten years. It is the ﬁrst study to
provide such information.
How the study was performed
We recruited a panel of 28 scientiﬁc experts from around the world
(see Web Table A online
1
) who are at the forefront of their ﬁelds;
about half of them work in developing countries, and the remainder
are either originally from developing countries or are well acquainted
with public health problems of developing countries. We chose to
consult scientists rather than policy-makers or other stakeholders
because they are most familiar with current scientiﬁc research – a
prerequisite for making the sort of judgements that this study requires.
A conscious effort was made to balance the proportion of men and
women and to represent scientists from various specialty areas and from
a range of countries.
We began the study with an open-ended question: ‘What do you think
are the major biotechnologies that can help improve health in developing
countries in the next ﬁve to ten years?’ Then, as the panelists responded,
we asked them to identify the criteria driving their choices. Their responses
indicated that the panelists took the following factors into consideration
when assessing the importance of the technologies.
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

e
t

a
l
.
Top Ten
Biotechnologies
for Improving
Health in
Developing
Countries
147
• Impact. How much difference will the technology make in improving
health?
• Appropriateness. Will it be affordable, robust and adjustable to health
care settings in developing countries, and will it be socially, culturally
and politically acceptable?
• Burden. Will it address the most pressing health needs?
• Feasibility. Can it realistically be developed and deployed in a time
frame of 5–10 years?
• Knowledge gap. Does the technology advance health by creating
new knowledge?
• Indirect beneﬁts. Does it address issues such as environmental
improvement and income generation that have indirect, positive
effects on health?
We used the Delphi Method to achieve consensus (Adler and Ziglio,
1996) (see Web Note A online
2
). We worked with the panelists through
several rounds by using combinations of personal interviews, e-mail
messages, faxes and phone calls, and analyzed their input to produce
the resulting priority list.
The top ten
The results of the study are shown in Table 1. There was a high
degree of consensus regarding the top three technologies: all but
one panelist included at least one of these among their top three
choices. Here we discuss the top three; all ten technologies are
discussed in detail in a separate report (Daar et al., 2002).
148
Table 1 The top ten biotechnologies with scores based on rankings of
the expert panel
Final
ranking
Biotechnology Final
score
1 Modiﬁed molecular technologies for affordable,
simple diagnosis of infectious diseases
288
2 Recombinant technologies to develop vaccines
against infectious diseases
262
3 Technologies for more efﬁcient drug and vaccine
delivery systems
245
4 Technologies for environmental improvement
(sanitation, clean water, bioremediation)
193
5 Sequencing pathogen genomes to understand their
biology and to identify new antimicrobials
180
6 Female-controlled protection against sexually
transmitted diseases, both with and without
contraceptive effect
171
7 Bioinformatics to identify drug targets and to
examine pathogen-host interactions
168
8 Genetically modiﬁed crops with increased nutrients
to counter speciﬁc deﬁciencies
159
9 Recombinant technology to make therapeutic
products (for example, insulin, interferons) more
affordable
155
10 Combinatorial chemistry for drug discovery 129
The most highly rated category is ‘Modiﬁed molecular technologies
for affordable, simple diagnosis of infectious diseases’. Early, accurate
diagnosis of infectious disease is important not only for prompt
treatment, but also to limit the spread of disease and avoid the waste
of resources on ineffective treatments. According to panelists, many
diagnostic techniques currently in use in developing countries are
cumbersome and unsuitable for use in low-resource settings. Molecular
diagnostic technologies that are either already in use or are being tested in
low-income regions include the polymerase chain reaction (PCR) (Harris,
1998), monoclonal antibodies (Palmer et al., 1998) and recombinant
antigens (Aidoo et al., 2001). Modiﬁcations can make these technologies
more suitable for the developing world; for example, a PCR-based HIV test
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

e
t

a
l
.
Top Ten
Biotechnologies
for Improving
Health in
Developing
Countries
149
that detects the presence of pro-viral DNA in infants has been simpliﬁed
to use ﬁlter paper to process and store blood samples. The DNA can be
ampliﬁed while the sample is bound to the ﬁlter paper, and samples stored
this way are heat-stable and can be used for many months (Panteleeff et
al., 1999; Beck et al., 2001). Simple hand-held test devices that rely on the
binding speciﬁcity of monoclonal antibodies or recombinant antigens to
diagnose infection may be easily adaptable to settings without running
water, refrigeration or electricity (Palmer et al., 1998; Aidoo et al., 2001).
The second most highly rated category is ‘Recombinant technologies
to develop vaccines against infectious diseases’. Vaccines are a
critical component of disease management in developing countries.
Recombinant technologies are now at the forefront of efforts to produce
new vaccines. For example, as part of the Malaria Vaccine Initiative
3
,
researchers have tested a subunit vaccine against malaria known as
RTS,S/AS02. The phase 1 trial results were promising in adults in The
Gambia (Bojang et al., 2001), and phase 2 trials are now underway in
children in The Gambia and Mozambique (Lee et al., 2002). Other
examples mentioned by panelists include recombinant hepatitis B
vaccine (Abraham et al., 1999) and prime-boost vaccine strategies
(Belshe et al., 2001). Some recombinant vaccines are already being
manufactured in developing countries, sometimes at a fraction
of the cost of the standard imported alternative (Abraham et al.,
1999).
The third most highly rated category is ‘Technologies for more
efﬁcient drug and vaccine delivery systems’. Most vaccines
and many drugs are administered by injection, and yet tens of
thousands of new cases of blood-borne diseases, such as HIV/AIDS
and hepatitis B, are caused each year by unsanitary injections
(Kane et al., 1999). The enormous expense of refrigeration
(maintaining the required temperature can add up to 80% of
the cost of vaccine delivery in developing countries) and the
inconvenience of frequent dosing are two other drawbacks to
current methods of vaccine and drug delivery (World Health
Organization, 2001). Alternatives to injections, frequent
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
150
dosing and refrigeration could increase safe access to drugs
and vaccines, saving millions of lives (Jha et al., 2002). Current
alternatives include powdered vaccines, edible vaccines
(Langridge, 2000) and controlled-release formulations that
replace the need for multiple doses (Jodar et al., 2001).
Assumptions about biotechnology
and global health
The results of our survey cast doubt on several common
assumptions about the applicability of biotechnologies in
developing countries. First, the assumption that biotechnology
is irrelevant to the health needs of the world’s poor is challenged
by the panel’s identiﬁcation of tools that could help control illness
in the developing world. Infectious disease can be controlled
by molecular diagnostics (rated ﬁrst) and recombinant vaccines
(second). Recombinant therapeutic proteins (ninth) are also relevant
to developing countries, where an epidemiological transition is in
progress. Today, 60% of all deaths in developing countries are due
to non-communicable diseases, and this ﬁgure is expected to reach
73% by 2020 (World Health Organization, 1996). Malnutrition could
be ameliorated using enriched genetically modiﬁed crops (eighth).
Panelists also recognized the link between the empowerment of
women and health, citing female-controlled protection against
sexually transmitted disease (sixth), which can be addressed in part by
genomics-based technologies (Boyd et al., 1997; Kelley et al., 2002), as
having potential to improve health in developing countries.
Second, our results discredit the assumption that biotechnology cannot
contribute to the prevention of disease and the promotion of health.
Vaccination is perhaps the best available form of prevention against
infectious disease, and the new ﬁeld of recombinant vaccines (rated
second) is already making inroads where traditional vaccines have not
been successful (for example, against malaria [Bojang et al., 2001]).
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

e
t

a
l
.
Top Ten
Biotechnologies
for Improving
Health in
Developing
Countries
151
Alternatives to injections and vaccine refrigeration, covered under new
systems of drug and vaccine delivery (third), can circumvent the need
for refrigeration and reduce the number of new cases of blood-borne
diseases caused each year by contaminated syringes. Technologies for
environmental improvement (fourth), such as bioremediation, can help
transform or sequester unhealthy pollutants in the soil or drinking water,
improving public health.
Third, the results of this study suggest that biotechnology, especially
molecular diagnositics (rated ﬁrst), can be made affordable for the
developing world. Bioremediation (fourth) is usually less expensive
than traditional methods of waste treatment or disposal (United States
Environmental Protection Agency), and bioinformatics (seventh), the
computer-based analysis of biological data (particularly gene sequences),
is surprisingly affordable owing to free data, software and training
available online (Butler, 2001; Benson et al., 2001). Enforcement of
intellectual property rights will be crucial to the affordability of these
technologies. Intellectual property is a complex subject plagued by
confusion (Gold et al., 2002). It is encouraging to note that, when
the interests of developing countries are concerned, key stakeholders
can be magnanimous (Normile, 2000). The University of Ottawa
and the University of Havana have decided to forgo the royalties
of a jointly developed pneumonia-meningitis vaccine in instances
where it is used for strictly humanitarian purposes (R. Roy, personal
communication). These sorts of arrangements are breaking new
ground in intellectual property rights.
Though we emphasize here the usefulness of foresight and
prioritization of promising biotechnologies, we do not wish to
suggest that our top ten list comprises the only biotechnologies
that have value for improving health in developing countries.
Several technologies that scored high in the study but were not
among the top ten include proteomics to target proteins and
peptides that could be used in vaccines and therapeutic agents;
DNA sequence analysis to discover population polymorphisms
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
152
that may cause a predisposition to regionally speciﬁc diseases;
gene-based drug screening technologies for local or traditional
medicines aimed at providing affordable medicines while
making the best use of local and natural resources such as
indigenous plants and snake or insect venoms; and genetic
modiﬁcation of plants for production of common drugs (that is,
using plants as bioreactors for drug production).
An appropriate balance
The intention of this study is to highlight the potential of
biotechnologies for improving health in developing countries.
This focus, however, should in no way diminish the importance
of proven health strategies. Health education, for instance, is
integral to the control of the AIDS pandemic, as is the provision
and use of male condoms. Improvements in sanitation can markedly
reduce the incidence of water-borne diseases, and basic nutritional
education can help prevent nutrient deﬁciencies. These tools are
available now, whereas the biotechnologies in our top ten list are
at varying stages of development. Still, there is increasing evidence
of the potential of these biotechnologies for improving the health of
people in developing countries. A recombinant vaccine against HIV has
successfully completed phase 2 clinical trials (Belshe et al., 2001). If this
vaccine proves to be effective, affordable and culturally acceptable, it
could be more successful at halting the spread of HIV than many current
methods. Thanks to the sequencing of the genome of the malaria parasite
Plasmodium falciparum, the drug fosmidomycin has moved in less than
two years into clinical trials for the treatment of malaria. Fosmidomycin
had already been approved for treating urinary infections; a systematic
search of the parasite’s genome revealed that it contains an enzyme known
to be blocked by this drug (Jomaa et al., 1999; Wiesner et al., 2002).
We ought, therefore, to strive to achieve an appropriate balance between
such technologies and conventional strategies. This is not an easy task,
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

e
t

a
l
.
Top Ten
Biotechnologies
for Improving
Health in
Developing
Countries
153
but to ignore the potential of biotechnology is not the answer – not when
there is strong evidence of its usefulness. Part of this balance will involve the
appreciation that these technologies can be used to improve conventional
public health strategies such as vaccines and sanitation.
What next?
This foresight study is a ﬁrst step towards greater health equity through
the application of biotechnology. A number of secondary steps ﬂow
immediately from these results. First, we encourage individual countries
to assess the appropriateness of these technologies given their national
contexts, and to focus on those technologies deemed to offer the
greatest beneﬁt. The process and criteria identiﬁed in this study can be
used to guide these assessments.
We also encourage regional associations of developing countries to
examine how they collectively can improve health in their regions
by promoting the technologies suggested by our report. Our full
report has been accepted for formal consideration by the Science
and Technology Commission of the New Partnership for Africa’s
Development
4
(NEPAD; J. Mugabe, personal communication).
NEPAD represents a pledge among African leaders committed to
the eradication of poverty and to development of their region. It
recognizes the importance of science and technology for sustainable
development in Africa.
We urge pharmaceutical and biotechnology industry asso-
ciations to work with their member companies to determine
where the top ten biotechnologies sit in their product pipelines,
to explore any impediments to their development, and to
work with WHO and developing countries to address access
issues for those technologies deemed suitable for diffusion.
Such partnerships have been identiﬁed as a key strategy
in the seminal report titled ‘Making New Technologies
E
t
h
i
c
s

o
f

S
c
i
e
n
c
e

a
n
d

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
154
Work for Human Development’ from the United Nations
Development Programme (2001).
Our results can also be used to guide the policy formulation of
major international donors and bilateral aid agencies such as
the U. S. National Institutes of Health, Rockefeller Foundation,
Wellcome Trust, Gates Foundation and the proposed Global
Health Research Fund (World Health Organization, 2001).
By providing concrete examples, this study focuses public attention
on the beneﬁts of genomics and other biotechnologies for
developing countries and thereby sets the stage for more effective
advocacy by WHO and others regarding harnessing biotechnology
for developing world health.
The top ten list also focuses attention on those technologies that
require further assessment. We encourage WHO to conduct a
formal technology assessment of key examples from the top ten list
of biotechnology platforms to determine their cost effectiveness.
Moreover, we recommend that WHO repeat this global foresight
exercise on a periodic basis (for example, every two to three years)
to keep attention focused on the most promising technologies as the
science develops. The process and criteria we have developed in this
study would be useful for that purpose.
Foresight exercises such as ours have been found to increase
communication, encourage the community to concentrate on the longer
term, help foster better coordination among different stakeholders and
develop a consensus on a shared future vision and commitment to speciﬁc
goals (Martin, 1995).
By focusing attention on the most promising biotechnologies, we have
taken an important step beyond the WHO report, ‘Genomics and World
Health’, and down the path towards implementation.
A
b
d
a
l
l
a
h

S
.

D
a
a
r

e
t

a
l
.
Top Ten
Biotechnologies
for Improving
Health in
Developing
Countries
155
We are grateful to the panel for providing the expertise to carry out this project; L.-C. Tsui, S.
Scherer and C. Evans for help with our analysis of the technologies; A. J. Ivinson for editing this
paper; and T. Pang, T. Evans, M. Fathalla, E. Dowdeswell and D. Yach for providing comments.
Grant support was provided by the Program in Applied Ethics and Biotechnology (supported
by the Ontario Research and Development Challenge Fund, GlaxoSmithKline, Merck and Co.,
Sun Life Financial, the University of Toronto, the Hospital for Sick Children, Sunnybrook
and Women’s College Health Sciences Centre and the University Health Network) and the
Canadian Program on Genomics and Global Health (supported by Genome Canada). P.A.S.
is supported by an investigator award from the Canadian Institutes of Health Research. The
University of Toronto Joint Centre for Bioethics is a Pan American Health Organization/
World Health Organization Collaborating Center for Bioethics.
Supplementary information is available on the Nature Genetics website.
Notes
*. Program in Applied Ethics and Biotechnology: A. S. Daar, H.
Thorsteinsdóttir, A. C. Smith, S. Nast
Joint Centre for Bioethics: A. S. Daar, H. Thorsteinsdóttir, D. K. Martin, A.
C. Smith, S. Nast and P. A. Singer
Departments of Public Health Sciences and Surgery: A. S. Daar
Pan American Health Organization/World Health Organization
Collaborating Center for Bioethics: A. S. Daar, P. A. Singer
Collaborative Program in Bioethics: D. K. Martin
Department of Health Policy, Management and Evaluation: D. K. Martin
Department of Medicine, University of Toronto, 88 College Street,
Toronto, Ontario M5G 1L4, Canada: P. A. Singer
1. http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v32/n2/extref/ng1002-229-S2.pdf
2. http://www.nature.com/ng/journal/v32/n2/extref/ng1002-229-S1.pdf
3. Information on the Malaria Vaccine Initiative is available online at
http://www.malariavaccine.org
4. The ofﬁcial website of NEPAD is located at http://www.nepad.com.
E
t
h
i
c
s

T
e
c
h
n
o
l
o
g
y
158
_________. 2001. Fact Sheet 169: Global alliance for vaccines and
immunization. Geneva, Switzerland, World Health Organization.
http://www.who.int/vaccines/gavi/FactSheet-en.doc (Accessed 10
February 2006.)
_________. 2001. Macroeconomics and health: Investing in health for
economic development (Report of the Commission on Macroeconomics and
Health). Geneva, Switzerland, World Health Organization.
_________. 2002. Genomics and World Health: Report of the Advisory
Committee on Health Research. Geneva, Switzerland.
$IVISION¬OF¬%THICS¬OF¬3CIENCE¬AND¬
4ECHNOLOGY¬OF¬5.%3#/
The Division of £thics of Science and TechnoIogy refIects the priority
UN£SCO gives to ethics of science and technoIogy, with emphasis on
bioethics. One objective of the medium-term strategy of the Organization
is to 'promote principIes and ethicaI norms to guide scientific and
technoIogicaI deveIopment and sociaI transformation´.
Activities of the Division incIude providing support for Member States of
UN£SCO that are pIanning to deveIop activities in the fieId of ethics of
science and technoIogy, such as teaching programmes, nationaI ethics
committees, conferences and UN£SCO Chairs.
The Division aIso ensures the executive secretariat for three internationaI
ethics bodies, nameIy the WorId Commission on the £thics of Scientific
KnowIedge and TechnoIogy (COM£ST), the tnternationaI ßioethics
Committee (tßC) and the tntergovernmentaI ßioethics Committee
(tGßC).
UN£SCO
Division of £thics of Science and TechnoIogy
SociaI and Human Sciences Sector
1, rue MioIIis
75732 Paris Cedex 15
france
http://www.unesco.org/shs/ethics